Individual mailbox backups... general inquiry!

[Mike_Kehm]

<originally posted in the 9.1 forums>

Ken,

I read the article from the website you mentioned in other threads (http://mail.tekscan.com/nomailboxes.htm), I was wondering if you have any experiences with using version 11d with it's brick-level change technology? I use version 9.1 (updated) and I currently run backups nightly of the Exchange database and logs and I do a once a week individual mailbox backup of selected Executive staff members (for legal precautions, mostly), of about 14 mailboxes.

Is there significant improvements that would suggest that you should do brick-level backups (when using 11d) throughout the normal business hours as well as the full database and logs at night? I am a bit skeptical on doing individual mailbox backups when the combined .edb and .stm files are at 180GB already. Backing up to LTO3 400/800GB tapes, which takes ~3hrs.

I use to run a weekly full individual mailbox backup job that took 24+ hours (over the weekend), but have since stopped and have been just doing database and logs for quite some time now. Mostly to reduce the overall time for all my jobs to run, especially since I average 1.5TB of data being backed up in any given week.

I am in no rush to spend the money to upgrade to version 11d just yet as 9.1 works well for what I need it to do currently. I am just curious to know if the performance in the overall time it takes to do these backups using the "Continuous Protection for Exchange" is much improved.

Thanks in advanced for any insight.

[Andrew_Wojtowic]

i used to do brick level but the time it took to run was to long.  i have about 2500 mailboxes.  we invested in Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange.  now i only back up information store in a full backup every night and its done in only a few hours on a LTO-3.  if i need to restore i use Quest to restore individual mailbox.  saves a ton of time.

[D_B_5]

Mike,

First, there is a difference between Continuous Protection and the new ability to restore Mailboxes/Messages out of the database backup.  CPS allows for point in time restores and keeps transaction log growth limited due to recovery point jobs running.  CPS does allow the ability to restore the message from the database, but keep in mind it's added function/role in a backup strategy.

The ability to restore individual messages and mailboxes from the dtabase backup is a great thing as far as time goes.  Whatever amount of time your current database backup for exchange takes, simply add a few minutes on that and you have what it will take to use the new feature.  The extra few minutes on top of the database job is from the scanning process of reading all the mailboxes present on the server, but has no real impact on the time it takes to run the job.  You will just see the job preparing for a few moments, then it runs as normal.  

Mailbox backups were very slow due to the MAPI interface, hence your 24 hour backup.  Now everything is backed up with the database, so mailboxes are read directly from the database and MAPI is no longer used in that process to access each mailbox and each message within the mailbox.

Hope that helps you understand a little better.

[Mike_Kehm]

Thanks for the insight Andrew and D B.

Good to know that, or at least it sounds like I wouldn't need to restore the entire database to a Recovery Storage Group and then use EXMerge to restore just an individual mailbox if what you are saying is true with the newer technology of CPS and added restore functionality of BE 11d.

I haven't tried using Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange, but I have worked a bit with Ontrack's PowerControls... I presume this is the same concept in software. If I can acheive individual mailbox restores from version 11d in the manner that D B mentioned (without a full dB restore) I couldn't justify spending the addition costs of using a 3rd party software such as Ontrack PowerControls which they quoted me as such:

                                                  Part Number               Units         Price  /  UnitPrice

Server License                              90PCE42SL2                   2           $495.00      $990.00

Mailbox License                           90PCE42ML300              300          $4.05         $1,214.85

ExtractWizard Agents                   90PCWE42VB2                 2           $495.00      $990.00

NTBackup ExtractWizard Agent     90PCWE42NT2                 2           Included      $0.00

PowerControls Agents                                                        0                             $0.00

                                                                                     Total License Fee      $3,194.85

                                                                           Maintenance Fee per Month  $47.92

Maintenance Fee - 18%               90PCWE42MF12         Total Maintenance Fee    $575.07 

                                                                          US Sales Tax (if applicable)    $0.00

                                                                                  Total Price Quote        $3,769.92

Thanks for the insight. It will definately help me in my planning.

[D_B_5]

The restore of individual items is simple in BE 11D.  You just drill into the IS, to the SG, to the mailbox store, and finally into the user.  From there, select the whole mailbox, or open up the inbox and select which message(s) to restore.  From a B2D job, the restore will only take seconds.  From a tape device it will stage the entire database and then restore the message so it takes longer.  A good strategy is to do backups to a B2D folder and duplicate copy them to tape.  That way restores can be done from B2D.