Field note / 7 September 2010
A farm record is a recovery tool, not paperwork
The most useful document during an incident is the one that explains how the environment was built and what changed.
Farm documentation has a reputation problem. It is often written for an audit, stored somewhere inconvenient and never updated. In a recovery situation, the same document becomes a map of the assumptions that must be rebuilt.
The record does not need to be a hundred pages. It needs to answer the questions that appear when a service is unavailable: which servers, which accounts, which URLs, which certificates, which databases and which recent changes could explain the symptom?
Record the things that are hard to rediscover
Start with the topology, service accounts, service applications, web applications and content database boundaries. Add the backup schedule, the restore procedure and the owner of each dependency. Then add the change log, because the most common cause of an incident is a recent change that nobody connected to the symptom.
Store the record where the incident team can reach it without the affected farm. Test it by asking someone who did not build the environment to follow it. Their questions reveal the gaps better than a review meeting.
The short list
Checks worth running
- List the topology, accounts, URLs, certificates and database boundaries.
- Include the backup, restore and ownership information in the same record.
- Ask someone outside the build team to use the record for a dry run.
Documentation is not a substitute for a recovery test, but it makes the test meaningful. The farm record is the difference between reconstructing a system and guessing at it.
Outside reading
Reference shelf
Official documentation and independent community reading for the subjects in this note.
- Microsoft Learn: SharePoint administration (opens in a new tab)Operational guidance for service settings, site management and the modern admin experience.
- Microsoft Learn: SharePoint documentation (opens in a new tab)The starting point for current SharePoint administration, development and hybrid guidance.
- Microsoft Support (opens in a new tab)Support articles, troubleshooting steps and product help from Microsoft.
- Microsoft Tech Community (opens in a new tab)Community discussion, product announcements and practical posts from Microsoft teams.
- Microsoft Learn Q&A (opens in a new tab)A community question and answer space hosted by Microsoft.
- SharePoint Stack Exchange (opens in a new tab)An independent question and answer community for SharePoint practitioners.
- Microsoft Security Response Center (opens in a new tab)Security advisories, update guidance and vulnerability response information.
- Microsoft Security blog (opens in a new tab)Microsoft guidance on security research, response and platform protection.
- Microsoft Download Center (opens in a new tab)Official downloads for Microsoft tools, updates and supporting packages.
- Microsoft Learn: PowerShell documentation (opens in a new tab)Language reference, cmdlet documentation and guidance for repeatable automation.
- Microsoft Learn: SQL Server documentation (opens in a new tab)Official reference material for database engine configuration, performance and recovery.
- Microsoft Learn: Windows Server documentation (opens in a new tab)Current guidance for Windows Server roles, networking, storage and management.
- Microsoft Learn: SharePoint search (opens in a new tab)Documentation for search architecture, crawling and result management.
- PowerShell Gallery (opens in a new tab)A public repository for PowerShell modules and scripts. Review package provenance before use.
- Microsoft Learn: Server memory configuration (opens in a new tab)How SQL Server allocates memory and how the maximum server memory setting is applied.