Backup Exchange 2003 HELP

[dougdude9]

ALL,

I have been trying to backup exchange for the longest time and have been unsuccessful.  I finally got it to where it won't say "LOADING MEADIA?" when I come in the next morning.  However, now when I come in the next morning the backup is still running.  It didn't used to be this way, but perhaps I screwed something up when I was troubleshooting other problems.  Even the Friday backup that starts at 6pm will still be running when I come in Monday morning. I can see the byte count counting up and when I view the properties I can tell it is backing up individual messages in mailboxes.  I'm not sure if this is how it is supposed to be setup. 

If you look at the 2 images I inserted, maybe someone can tell me i have it setup wrong.  I have selected to backup mailboxes, but it is also selected to backup the information store.  Should I be doing both?  BTW, these are full backups I'm doing... no incremental or anything like that. 

I just realized I can't post the images because they have to be on a server.  Anyway, can someone tell me if I should be selecting "Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes" under selections on the left as well as "Microsoft Information Store?" and then the First Storage Group?

Thanks,

Doug

Sorry I don't know much about Exchange or Backups.  I'm  probably not asking what I need to ask.   

[dougdude9]

I guess my main question is if I should be selecting botht he individual mailboxes as well as the information store.  Is having both checked causing it to take so long? 

Thanks,

Doug

[Ken_Putnam]

You NEED to be backing up the Information Store, since that is what you would need for Disaster Recovery

MailBox backups are a "nice to have", but as you have noticed take a LOOOOONG time  (many have also had problems when it comes time to restore)

You may want to take a look at  http://mail.tekscan.com/nomailboxes.htm for a fuller discussion, to decide if you really need to do brick level backups or not

(V11d will let you do a individual mail item restore from a stores backup [AKA GRT], but has it's own problems)

[dougdude9]

Thanks Ken for replying!  I'm going to go ahead and take the individual mailbox backup out of the mix (or aka brick level)... I actually learned a new term today! 

Anyway, I think this will do the trick for me.  It must have been unselected before and when I recreated a job I figured I was supposed to select it.  Hopefully tonights backup will work!

Thanks again!  I also liked the link you included. 

Doug

[dougdude9]

Ok, another question on this backup selection...

Should I be selecting to backup the system state and service state of the exchange server?

Thanks,

Doug

[Ken_Putnam]

If you want to be able to do a Disaster Recovery of that server , yes