Diff backup fails as another product took last 'backup'

[Purrcat]

I have a virtual setup where Exchange 2010 is on a Windows 2008 VM. I'm running BExec 2010 R2 on another 2008 VM.

VMware's Data Recovery module takes an image snapshot of the Exchange server every day and stores to a NAS drive. As well as this Veeam Replication takes another image overnight and sends that offsite for DR purposes.

When all this was put in place BExec became largely redundant however I wanted to keep the old regime of taking daily Diffs of Exchange and other data plus a Full backup of Exchange and other data carried out on a Sunday. I'm just over cautious I guess!

The Data-only BExec jobs run with no problem but the Exchange-only Diff backup moans that the last full backup wasn't done by BExec, even though both Exchange and Data have been snapshot'ed by the same replication/image products.  The actual error I get is below -

The Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft Exchange was not used to create the last full backup of this database. You must use the Exchange Agent to run a full backup before you run a differential or incremental backup.

Why is Data-only backup OK co-existing with DRM and Veeam but Exchange complains? Is there anything I can change in the Exchange job(s) that will overcome this or is this just a dumb idea? There's nothing in either the DRM or Veeam Replication jobs that explicitly act upon Exchange - they both just take server images.

Can a kind expert please enlighten me?

Thanks

[pkh]

There is nothiing you can do about this.  This is the way things works.  When you backup the VM, whether you are using Veeam or BE, they all call the VMware API and the last application to backup the applications in the VM will be the VMware API.  You would just have to do use the Exchange agent to do your full backup so that you can do your incremental backups.

[Purrcat]

Fair enough. What I don't understand is that before I migrated Exchange from 2003 to 2010 this setup was working quite happily with no such errors. The Diff job didn't seem to care then even though the other products were still being employed in the same way?

[pkh]

Perhaps Exchange 2010 does the check that Exchange 2003 failed to do.