Forum Discussion

sudhakarkumar's avatar
sudhakarkumar
Level 4
8 years ago

DAG Exchange Hyper-v level backup

Hi everyone, We have DAG group which is having 4 servers(2 cas servers, 2 mail servers) which all are Hyper-v machines. currenlty there is a windows state level backup was configured for these serv...
  • Lowell_Palecek's avatar
    Lowell_Palecek
    8 years ago

    I asked the NetBackup developers for Hyper-V:

    "Can he run his Hyper-V backup policy at the same time as his Exchange backup policy? The Exchange agent takes snapshots of the volumes on which the databases have data. Does this conflict with a Hyper-V backup?"

    Response:

    "We’d support it. It would be better to stagger the backups so the volume snapshots in-guest aren’t happening at same time as hyperv snapshots. but again, shouldn’t causing any consistency problems. The quiescing might take a bit longer though."

    My explanation of the two kinds of snapshots mentioned in the response: Snapshots of the Exchange data volumes occur "in-guest." That is, the NetBackup Exchange agent executes in Windows inside the VM (the guest), and uses VSS within the Windows OS. Hyper-V snapshots occur outside the VM, as they are snapshots of the volumes on which the VM is deployed.

Lowell_Palecek's avatar
Lowell_Palecek
Level 6
8 years ago

Hyper-V backup does not cause truncation of the Exchange transaction logs. Your Exchange backups will not be missing any data. Is that what you are asking regarding whether it affects your Exchange backups?

A Windows System State backup is not a good DR strategy for your mailbox data. First, Windows file system backups exclude the Exchange data files in order to avoid redundant backup data. You can change your exclusion settings, but if the Exchange databases are not quiescent when the files are backed up, recovery will be similar to crashing the system and bringing it back up. The databases likely would be in a bad state and not mountable without intervention. Transactions that were in process would be lost.

  • sudhakarkumar's avatar
    sudhakarkumar
    Level 4
    8 years ago

    can i go for complete hyper-v virttual machine backup and exchange with microsoft database exchange availability groups??

  • sudhakarkumar's avatar
    sudhakarkumar
    Level 4
    8 years ago

    During the time of Hyper-v backup, does it allow the Exchange backup. I mean both backups are on the same time.

    • Lowell_Palecek's avatar
      Lowell_Palecek
      Level 6
      8 years ago

      I asked the NetBackup developers for Hyper-V:

      "Can he run his Hyper-V backup policy at the same time as his Exchange backup policy? The Exchange agent takes snapshots of the volumes on which the databases have data. Does this conflict with a Hyper-V backup?"

      Response:

      "We’d support it. It would be better to stagger the backups so the volume snapshots in-guest aren’t happening at same time as hyperv snapshots. but again, shouldn’t causing any consistency problems. The quiescing might take a bit longer though."

      My explanation of the two kinds of snapshots mentioned in the response: Snapshots of the Exchange data volumes occur "in-guest." That is, the NetBackup Exchange agent executes in Windows inside the VM (the guest), and uses VSS within the Windows OS. Hyper-V snapshots occur outside the VM, as they are snapshots of the volumes on which the VM is deployed.

      • sudhakarkumar's avatar
        sudhakarkumar
        Level 4
        8 years ago

        Thank you Palecek,

        Now I can proceed to configure both.