Exchange Backup Strategy

[AdrianV]

I know that probably this topic was discussed before but I was not able to find a relevan t solution on the forum.

Basically, I need some feedback on a backup strategy for our Exchange 2007 server.

Right now I use a template that performs a full backup every night but the disk space is becoming an issue and I was thinking to switch to a Full Backup once a week and then incremental or differential daily. When reading about it says that to restore from incremental backup you will need all incrmental backup since the last full backup and the full backup - so if an incremental backup fails this means that all other incremental backups after are useless?

How about differentials? It will not clear the logs and I have about 50 mailboxes. is it safe to have logs that are 1-2 GB in size?

Any advice on a backup strategy is really appreciated.

I am using BX 12 and exchange agent installed on a 2008 x 64 server

Thank you

[Dev_T]

Hello,

Its always recomended to perform FULL Backups of Exchange. Backup Exchange IS along the System Drive. I found it difficult to perform a restore Exchange Incremental backups for Restore.

Hope this helps...

[CraigV]

Hi there,

Make sure you have the license for the Exchange agent...this allows you to select the Information Store itself, and run live backups withouth taking it offline. Same with running restores...Back up the System State of the server too. That is all...I have done a successful restore of a crashed server using this, after staging the Exchange IS to disk first...
However, some suggestions:

1. Don't use Advanced Open File Option in the same job...this causes issues (has been known too!). Symantec don't recommend this...
2. If you need to use AOFO, consider splitting your jobs. This assumes you are backing up files, and system state etc.
( https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/backing-databases-and-files-same-tape-separate-jobs...)

Laters!

[AdrianV]

So then your advice is to do a Full Backup everyday?

[CraigV]

Hi there,

We run Exchange Server 2003 Standard (in the process of getting the final details on upgrading to Exchange 2010), and your INformation Stores aren't overly big.
I always run a full backup of the Exchange IS, as the majority of our sites run on LTO3 tapes, and they are being phased out in favour of HP StorageWorks MSL2024 LTO4 libraries.
My reasoning for running full backups is that I have the space on the tapes, and it means I only need 1 tape should I need to restore, compared to differential/incremental backups.
Hope this helps...?

[AdrianV]

It does help.
How back ago can you go with a restore in your case? Or how far is acceptable?

[CraigV]

Hi Adrian,

I use a GFS policy with Monthly, Weekly and Daily jobs. The retention is as follows:

Monthly = 12 months
Weekly = 3 weeks (last Saturday is always a monthyl)
Daily = 6 days

How far YOU can go back depends on how your jobs are structured. Me personally...I like Monthly jobs. You will ALWAYS have someone who deleted files from 5 months ago, or an email etc that you need to recover.

[AdrianV]

And you do a Full Backup everytime for each of the policy?
How much space does that take?

[CraigV]

Hi,

It depends...some sites have over 400GB of data taking 12 hours (that is an Exchange job that firstly overwrites the tape with no AOFO, followed by a data job that follows afterwards that appends to the same tape); others maybe 75GB.
And I do full backups for the GFS policy. I prefer being able to restore quickly than having to restore from multiple tapes. Our environment is a mixture of LTO2, LTO3 and LTO4 autoloaders/libraries, with the older kit being phased out in favour of MSL2024 LTO4 libraries. On the whole, space on each site isn't an issue.

laters!

[AdrianV]

Space is an issue in my case - my store is about 40 GB and I have about 400 GB available on a disk as backup and then LTO3 tapes.
the way i have it setup is a daily full backup on a disk and then a full weekly backup on a tape. In this setup my disk space runs out really quick and i will need to start overwriting some backups.

[CraigV]

Why not write to tape? Have you done a test to see how long this will take? Alternatively you can look at running the backup to disk first, and then streaming it off to tape straight afterwards...

[AdrianV]

It takes about an hour on tape if I do a full backup.
so you think I should do a Full Backup on disk then stream the same full backup on tape? Every day?

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

If you can do it to tape, I would suggest going that route. I intend using disk when we start looking at data deduplication and Exchange archiving out of BEWS 2010, but I go straight to tape.
The only thing here is that when I restore out of Exchange, I duplicate the restore to disk first, and then restore from there...

[AdrianV]

Sounds good.
I'll see what I can do.
thank you for help everyone !