Common reasons for corruption in SharePoint Server

Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based application combined with the Microsoft Office suite. Microsoft Corporation first launched SharePoint in 2001 as a document management and storage system. In organizations, it is commonly used to create websites. According to a survey, SharePoint has 160 million users in 75,000 customer organizations.

SharePoint can be used as a safe place where users can store their crucial data and information. In addition, it allows users to access, organize and share information with almost all types of devices. A web browser is the only thing required here, be it Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Firefox. SharePoint is available in multiple editions for different roles, such as SharePoint Server, SharePoint Standard, SharePoint Enterprise, and SharePoint Online. Here in this article, we will talk about SharePoint Server.

Microsoft SharePoint Server is a popular server platform that is commonly used for information sharing, collaboration, and content management. It provides great benefits for organizations, such as:

• You can create an intranet portal for your organization to share information.

• You can manage and edit documents between multiple users and offices.

• Also, you can create a public-facing website.

The primary capabilities of SharePoint Server are collaboration, enterprise content management, enterprise search, and portal creation. Although the benefits of SharePoint Server are enormous, it has one major drawback. It has many internal errors that can sometimes cause serious problems. Also, the database file created by SharePoint Server is very prone to corruption just like any other database file. The following are the most common reasons for corruption in SharePoint Server:

• If SharePoint Server is low on RAM or hard disk space, you might be at high risk. It can cause a crash in SharePoint Server or damage the database file.
• Using virtual Microsoft SQL Server can also create problems for SharePoint Server users. Incorrect virtualization allows administrators to make big mistakes that can result in corruption.
• During the creation of content web applications, full URLs are mainly required. But if you use short or wrong URLs, it can cause serious problems.
• Enabling the default settings for the SharePoint database can be risky. For example: if the Auto Growth setting is enabled, it will increase the size of the database file by 1MB with each upload. Such action can slow down both SQL Server and SharePoint.
• SharePoint can store a large number of PDF files that contain invaluable information. SharePoint search allows you to access information stored in PDF files. Make sure you have installed iFilter only for SharePoint servers running the search index role. But if you are not using any “iFilter PDF”, it could be harmful to you.
• If you have disabled BLOB caching, you might be facing some serious issues. BLOB caching plays a very important role in SharePoint and improves its performance.

If you have made a SharePoint Server backup, you can easily restore it. But if there is no backup, you should try to repair the SharePoint database manually. There is a role in SharePoint Server 2010 to restore the configuration database. This will help you restore the farm settings. In SharePoint Server 2013 and 2016, you can directly restore the farm configuration without restoring the configuration database.

Follow the steps to know how to repair SharePoint database:

• Go to the Central Administration home page. In the “Backup and Restore” section, click “Restore from a backup”.
• Choose the “Backup to Restore” page on the “Restore from Backup” screen. Select the backup job and click Next to continue the process.
• Now choose the “Component to Restore” page and click the checkbox that is displayed next to the farm. Click Next to continue the process.
• In the “Restore Component” section, select the Restore Options page from the “Restore from backup” option. Note: Make sure the farm appears in Restore the following list of contents.
• In the “Restore configuration settings only” part, select “Restore configuration settings content and preferences”.
• In the “Restore Options” section, select “Restore Preference Type”. You must use the same configuration settings. Click OK to confirm this operation. Then click on the Start Restore option.

Before you can use the manual hack above, make sure to:

• You must be a member of the Farm Administrators group on the system running Central Administration.

• You have the permissions for a sysadmin server role on the database server that contains all the databases.