The growth of SharePoint around the world has exposed one of the major infrastructure challenges of the application: that there is no inherent two-way data replication engine built into the tool. Because of this, organizations face a choice between centralizing their SharePoint data and having users access it across high-latency or low-bandwidth links, or dealing with a decentralized SharePoint content structure, which often results in duplication of data, outdated content, slow end user performance, operations outages, regulatory risks, and discontented users.
This essential guide by Michael Noel focuses on understanding the various approaches organizations have taken in dealing with the explosion of SharePoint content across their organizations, and how to best distribute their content so that everyone can work with the most up-to-date content in the most reliable, efficient manner. We’ll focus on some of the built-in options such as new ones provided within SQL Server 2012, and also compare those options to third-party replication approaches, including information on how these approaches can be used to achieve high availability and business continuity objectives.