Exchange 2010 DAG server on BackupExec 2010 R3 server

[lboucher]

We are designing our Exchange 2010 environment and how it will integrate with BackupExec 2010 R3.  Our current environment is Exchange 2007 Sp3 in a CCR cluster.  With this setup, we have had very poor results running full Exchange backups to a deduplication device.  It seems that full Exchange backups using GRT only work well to a standard disk based backup device. 

One thought I had with Exchange 2010 was that we could make the BackupExec server a DAG member with passive copies of the databases.  By doing this, we can direct BackupExec to use the DAG group for Exchange backups with the backup server as the preferred DAG member to backup from.  We would then direct this backup to a data deduplication device with the thought that since the backup source is local the bottleneck for the backup should be removed and backups to data deduplication should work well.

My questions are:

1.  Is this a supported configuration?

2.  Will backing up from passive database copies on the backup server remove the bottleneck?

3.  Will this setup allow a full Exchange backup with GRT to a deduplication device to succeed?

Thanks,

Leo Boucher

[Riyaj_S]

1.  Is this a supported configuration?

--> Yes, this is supported configuration. But please review the following Technote for tips and recommendations to help you effectively use the Backup Exec Deduplication Option

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO21767

2.  Will backing up from passive database copies on the backup server remove the bottleneck?

--> Yes, please refer to this article : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876874.aspx

3.  Will this setup allow a full Exchange backup with GRT to a deduplication device to succeed?

--> Yes, you would be able to restore GRT items for exchange.

Hope this helps.