Disaster recovery

Disasters can occur unexpectedly, affecting Domino servers. Such events, ranging from hardware malfunctions and data corruption to human error, can significantly disrupt business operations. However, having a robust Domino disaster recovery plan in place can mitigate these risks and help ensure business continuity. Disaster recovery as it applies to Domino servers is an essential aspect of protecting data. It involves specific strategies and procedures that your organization can put into action to recover lost data and restore standard operations in the aftermath of a disaster.

Scenario for Domino disaster recovery

  • In case of hardware failure

    • If there is disk failure or disk corruption, you will need to reinstall the server on a new disk.

  • In case of software failure

    • If the operating system fails to boot and it’s impossible to recover it, you must reinstall the operating system. Doing so will require reinstalling the Domino server.

Recovering a Domino server and Backup database

Disaster recovery of a Domino server requires:

  • Installation of the Domino server

  • Rebuilding the directory structure

  • Restoring the server's non-database files (restoring notes.ini and server.id from backup).

  • Restoring the server's directory file (restoring names.nsf from backup).

The Domino Backup database (dominobackup.nsf) configuration must be recovered before proceeding to recover other Domino databases.

Note: The data from the log should be backed up manually. The default location is C:\backup\log. The log will be used to import the backup configuration and inventory list.

To recover the server and Backup database, follow these steps:

  1. (Best practice) Install the Domino server with same version as the previously installed damaged server.

  2. Ensure that the configuration of the new server installation matches that of the damaged server. For example, both installations must have the same directory structure, location, Domino data directory, and log directory.Examples of default paths for installation are C:\Domino and C:\Domino\Data

  3. Once server installation is complete, copy the notes.ini, server.id, and names.nsf files to the Domino data directory. (Note: server.id can be saved with a different name, so you should copy the .id file)

  4. Once the necessary files are copied, run the Domino server.

  5. Recover the Domino Backup database by following the steps in Recreating the Domino Backup database.