Yet Another Continuous Protection Server (CPS) Question for Exchange 2003

[Mark_Pow]

Hi All,

I have installed CPS and have it 'working' by following the information contained in this KB:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/287706.htm

However, I am confused as to how often I should schedule the CPS job and also when are the Transaction Logs flushed will get flushed? What happens during the first run? Should I be running these jobs in conjuction with a normal backup to a media server to Disk? Whats confused me is this sentence from the above KB article:

"Exchange mailbox stores cannot currently be protected by standard backup jobs and be in a CPS-Exchange-Backup, they can be in only one type of job or the other."

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Update: from the dialogue prompt after clicking "Backup Exchange Continuously" on the job:

 - Select a backup-to-disk folder that is on a local NTFS volume as the destination device

 - Specify a recurring schedule for the full backup of the Information Store on the Schedule property page

I am configuring the job on a server at one site (London) to backup the Exchange server in another site (Manchester) I also read somewhere on the forum that they schedule their jobs to run every Sunday. So am I correct in saying that this scheduled job backs up the IS. Then the Recovery Point interval truncates the logs every 8 hours, so scheduling the job say every 24 hours is redundant? I'm backing up over a WAN connection, what happens if the 60GB information store backup fails.

Message Edited by Mark Pow on 02-21-2008 05:07 AM

[Mark_Pow]

This absolutely brilliant post:

https://forums.symantec.com/syment/board/message?board.id=115&message.id=18717&query.id=3949#M18717

Cleared a few things up. Is CPS designed to back up over a WAN? If a backup fails for whatever reason (most commonly  the server rebooting or the line going down) is BE\CPS able to recover and ensure that the logs are flushed?

[Mark_Pow]

From a very helpful Presales Consultant (apologies if this solution has been posted before but I couldn't find it on here when I searched):

"I think the top issue is the initial replication which can take a long time as you pointed out; depending on the amount of data you are squeezing through the internet connection.

One way to get around this issue is to take a full backup of the Server you wish to protect, then start the replication job, pause it, restore the data on the Continuous Protection Servers appropriate folder and then restart the job. After the initialization, only changed data will be transmitted. This is often much faster than letting a job run over the weekend and works like a charm for SQL and Exchange jobs as well.

As you have already noticed, CPS does not clear the transaction logs, so a full backup is recommended once a week or once every 2 weeks depending on your environment.

CPS in general is very well suited and specifically designed for slower connection speeds as it has built in functions to reactivate replication jobs automatically should the connection fail at some point. It also allows you to throttle the bandwidth CPS uses during the day so your users can continue to work normally."