Verify SharePoint Restore

Question

I have created a new SharePoint 2007 MOSS Intranet. Our admin people are purchasing backup/restore software and I will eventually have to verify a restore of the farm backup they create. Has anyone got some suggestions on a best practice for this? Ours is a small 2-server farm built with VMWare VMs on SAN. How will I know that the restored version is a duplicate of the original in every way and what should I look out for?

Answer 1

In answer to the remarks:

There's no checklist. The problem is the dynamic nature of SharePoint. Team Sites come and go, as do documents and libraries. Who's to say one of your users didn't delete a document library and then you think after a restore something is missing.

I think the best bet would be to require your users to do a quick scan after a restore, see if they miss anything major, like sites or libraries that are supposed to be there. You yourself could have a "homemade" checklist that you follow to check if all major features deployed by you (features, timerjobs etc.) are still there.