Forum Discussion

lpetersson's avatar
lpetersson
Level 3
13 years ago

Exchange 2010 flat file backup

One of my clients has Backup Exec 2010 on a Windows 2003 server and Exchange 2010 on a Windows 2008 server. They don't want to install Backup Exec 2010 on the Exchange server and they can't/won't u...
2010
Backing Up
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Tip-How to
  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    13 years ago

    1) You have to stop the Exchange services and restart the Backup Exec (or disable Active File Exclusion) to do a flat file backup of Exchange - so interruption of mail services needed

    2) We can't truncate the logs this way as this is a feature of the API calls made into Exchange when performing an Exchange specific backup and is not a function of a file level backup of the volume holding the Exchange data (with or without VSS on the file system job)

    3) If you do a flat file backup you will have a lot of pain if you need to get one e-mail back instead of the whole Exchange server as you will have to build an offline Exchange environment (so Domain Controller Plus Exchannge server etc), then workout how to recover the flat files, then export the required data and then recover into your live environment which could easily take a period of days to complete.

     

    As such they really really need to reconsider their plans and invest in a proper configuration to protect their setup.

     

    Really you should be asking them how much they value their data and what their required timescales for recovery are - if the answer is very highly valued and must be recovered quickly then that would instantly be justification to invest.

     

    Oh and if you have an SLA with your client to help restore e-mails, I hope you are on an hourly rate and not an agreed term contract covering any issues as if they go with a flat file solution, restores won't possibly require a lot of time, they WILL require a lot of time.

Colin_Weaver's avatar
Colin_Weaver
Moderator
13 years ago

1) You have to stop the Exchange services and restart the Backup Exec (or disable Active File Exclusion) to do a flat file backup of Exchange - so interruption of mail services needed

2) We can't truncate the logs this way as this is a feature of the API calls made into Exchange when performing an Exchange specific backup and is not a function of a file level backup of the volume holding the Exchange data (with or without VSS on the file system job)

3) If you do a flat file backup you will have a lot of pain if you need to get one e-mail back instead of the whole Exchange server as you will have to build an offline Exchange environment (so Domain Controller Plus Exchannge server etc), then workout how to recover the flat files, then export the required data and then recover into your live environment which could easily take a period of days to complete.

 

As such they really really need to reconsider their plans and invest in a proper configuration to protect their setup.

 

Really you should be asking them how much they value their data and what their required timescales for recovery are - if the answer is very highly valued and must be recovered quickly then that would instantly be justification to invest.

 

Oh and if you have an SLA with your client to help restore e-mails, I hope you are on an hourly rate and not an agreed term contract covering any issues as if they go with a flat file solution, restores won't possibly require a lot of time, they WILL require a lot of time.