backup Exchange with VSS snapshot technology

[Alex_Tetyukhin]

Hi!

Can anybody explain: what advantages give us possibility to backup Exchange with VSS snapshot technology on Windows Server 2003? Will backups became faster with it? Or something else?

[Renuka_-]

Hello,



The VSS snapshot backup has several limitations, It has been designed to support the VSS technology added to Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 SP1. I t uses this VSS technology by default and will leave the Db operational while taking the snapshot.


The other possibility is to create two backup jobs. One job will back up the Exchange resources and not perform a snapshot, and a separate backup job for all of the other resources that will perform a snapshot.


To know more about the limitations and how to use it Refer to Page 1112 of the administrator'guide


Title.VERITAS Backup Exec (tm) 9.1 for Windows Servers Administrator's Guide (English)
http://support.veritas.com/docs/266190



NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answeredand would be moved toanswered questions pool.

[Alex_Tetyukhin]

I have read the manual but I didn't understand completely: are there any reasons to use snapshot backup of Exchange databases versus traditional backup with Agent?

P.S. Sorry I have not mentioned in my previous post that I use BE version 10.

[priya_khire]

Hello,

The use of snapshot technology has some advantages over the agent:
1. It uses Microsoft's Volume shadow copy service (VSS) which uses the snapshot technoloy
2. The Exchange agent will perform online backup of the database
3. Through snapshot technology, once the snapshot is taken, the Exchange database is left operational and users can connect to it. If exchange is remote, the remote agent activity is thus no longer needed and it will use less resources
4. The off host backups use snapshot technology.

The backup thus might not be faster, but as seen, they use a different technology with snapshot which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Hope this answers your question. In case you still have some more queries regarding this, do not hesitate to write back to the forum. However if we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked ‘assumed answered’ and would be moved to ‘answered questions’ pool.

Regards.