Exchange Backup taking 24 hours

[Tommy_Rotunno]

Backing up my exchange server slows down the email flow and sometimes locks up the server. There has to be a better way to backup exchange. I have the job split in two. I am backing up the hard drives and file shadow copy in one job and the mailboxes in the other. The mailbox job is the job that is causing all of the trouble. Has anyone mastered this procedure? I am using backup exec 9.1 sp2.
Tommy

[Dave_Bunye]

Without any knowledge of your server specs, I'll just point out some tips for making the job smaller at least so it won't take so long.

1) Use Single Instance Storage - This makes one copy of any attachment, regardless how many people received it. If you are talking large attachments like images, or mp3 songs sent to 20+ people each message, it adds up to a significant amount of data being backed up for each message. SIS cuts that down significantly.

2) Use Global Excludes - If you globally exclude certain folders like "Deleted Items" or "Sent Items" you will save a huge amount of space and time. Global Excludes are done by selecting the MS Mailbox item, then right clicking on it and selecting Advanced File Selections. From there, enter "**\Deleted Items" (minus the qoutes) in the path field and select Exclude on the right side of the screen (defaults to Include). The double asterik will find the Deleted Items folder anywhere withing the users mailbox structure and not back it up.

3) Make use of Full\Differential\Incremental backups - Many users simply do a Full backup everytime, which is a complete waste of time and storage space. Do one Full backup a week, with an Incremental and a few Differentials in there. So for a Sunday-Saturday week, you may do a rotation like F/D/D/I/D/D/D or a similar rotation that works around your schedule.

Always set the jobs to run at night to avoid the high use times at work. As for your server, perhaps it is simply toi slow or not up to standards.

[Ameet_Thakkar]

Kindly refer the following technote as it would give you detail information about backing up Exchange.

Title:- How to protect Exchange 2000 and 2003 servers using the Backup Exec for Windows Servers Exchange Agent

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/266074.htm

Please refer to the following Technote to know more on this subject:
1) http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/264851.htm

Please download the .zip file and make sure you have same registry key settings as mentioned in the comboON.reg. If you have the same registry key for the New Anti-virus version then it would work in Mapi mode. (Please ensure that you are not running the AntiVirus software in a dual mode (ie. VAPI/MAPI) but only in MAPI mode. Please refer the following document and make relevant changes in the AV software for Exchange 2003)

Please refer the following technotes as well.
2) Title:- How to determine if a reasonable completion time of an individual mailbox backup is being achieved on a network http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/235354.htm

3) Slow transfer rate or "Drive Not Responding" while performing Microsoft Exchange 5.5 or Microsoft Exchange 2000 individual mailbox backups with VERITAS Backup Exec (tm) for Windows Servers 7.x, 8.x, and 9.x.
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/231558.htm

Also refer to the Administrator's Guide to know about the recommended practices to improve mailbox and public folder backups. Refer to page no's. 1106 to 11010.

Refer to following Technote to download the Administrator's Guide:
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/263944.htm


Hope this resolves your query.
For test purpose please carry out Backup of Public folder's on Backup to Disk folder and check for the backup performance.
As an additional information, kindly refer to following steps mentioned in the MS Q article as well.
1)How to troubleshoot network connectivity problems (Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 325487 )
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325487


2) Multiple Default Gateways Can Cause Connectivity Problems ( Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 159168 )
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;159168

-----------------------------------------------
As a related document, kindly refer the following steps mentioned in the technote given below.
Title:- Backups on Microsoft Windows 2003 can cause poor and gradually declining system performance and Out of Memory Errors.
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/263139.htm


We hope this helps.

[Arnold_Rivera]

Our exchange database is about 25GB after offline defrag. It was taking 15 hours to complete the backup. I defragged the db. Then I defragged the hard disk to the point where I had contiguous free space (33% free). The backup time is now about 7 hours. I'm still testing stuff to cut it down further.

[Dave_Bunye]

Have you tried using those three tips I posted earlier? Those will cut down on your backup size, and thus the time it takes, significantly.