Exchange 2007 Brick Backup

[BlueInkAlchemis]

Does Backup Exec 11d provide the functionality or an Agent to facilitae a mailbox-level ("brick") backup in an Exchange 2007 environment?  What are the best practices for implementing such a backup?  Does Microsoft provide any sort of checklist or documentation related to this?  Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Message Edited by BlueInkAlchemist on 11-29-2007 01:36 PM

[Ken_Putnam]

As of v11d, BackupExec provides what Symantec calls GRT = "Granular Restore Technology"

At  job definition time choose "enable restore of individual items" as an option.  The backup must be directed to a locally attached NTFS volume (no tape or network shares) 

You can then duplicate the backup off the B2D folder, but at restore time, if it is not on a locally attached NTFS B2D folder, BackupExec will restore the entire stores backup to Temp space (or try to, anyway )  and then extract the desired items

Also, Symantec has problems with throughput for duplicating GRT backups to tape.  It currently is unacceptably slow, and they have been working on it for more than a month with no resolution

[ProjectGuy]

Hi,

   Something to share.  I was running B2D GRT backup at about 470MB/min followed by another backup job to put it in the NAS.  The second job was running at an acceptable speed 500MB/min ++.  Note the B2D job takes some 6 hours, whereas the second job takes about 2 hours.

   For safety reasons, I need to keep a gap between the two jobs to prevent them from colliding.  This is manual process and of course the customer is not happy.

   So I switch to templates and policies.  Noooo you can't have 2 templates attached to 2 different selection lists and run the jobs consecutively (use template rules to do this). 

   No choice left.  I used the build in backup and duplicate templates.  B2D GRT backup is really funky.  I swear it overwrites itself if you don't do the OPP correctly.  Duplication speed?  Now running at  120MB/min. 

   Sob!

Message Edited by ProjectGuy on 12-03-2007 10:20 AM

[Ken_Putnam]

You can use a POST JOB with BEMCMD to release a job, rather than using Policies (a step backwards, but i never had any problems with this approach.

No restrictions as to what job can or cannot be released - it just has to be defined in BackupExe