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confused.. need help

danisimo
Level 3

Hello,

I am a newbie here. I just recently took over the responsibility of backing up exchange 2003 using BackupExec 2010 version 13.0. I am doing my best trying to learn how to manage BackupExec. I have a few questions

  1. There are daily, weekly, and monthly backup jobs for exchange. I did not set it up this way. I am not sure if this is the best way of backing up exchange but isnt each backup job doing a full backup of exchange, so why have daily, weekly, monthly?
  2. If there should be a daily, weekly, and monthly backup jobs for exchange, how to define their media set periods ? would daily means overwrite protection: 5 days and append period: 5 days?
  3. I have learned about GRT: creates IMG folders and .bkf files for restoring individual mailboxes. the B2D folder is full and the IMG folders are not following the media overwrite protection period rule. How can I avoid this?

 

If I am missing anything about exchange backup, can you please clarify to me what I must also do. I feel like I am not on the right track in terms of backing up exchange

 

Thanks for your time

4 REPLIES 4

Kiran_Bandi
Level 6
Partner Accredited

1) Daily backups may be incremental / difeerential. 2) Depending upon the retention period requirements. Means how many days you want to keep your backup images. 3)About IMG folders refer this TN: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH66499 Regards...

AmolB
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

1) As a common backup strategy most of the admins configure daily incremental, weekly full

and monthly full. Although weekly and monthly are full but monthly must be having longer retention 

period. Backup strategy completely depends on the company policy and storage affordability.

 

2) Again the media set properties will depend on the retention policy, how long your company would

like to retain data. Incremental can be retained for a week, weekly for a month and then monthly for

a year.

 

3) Click on Tools->options->Media Management-> select "use recyclable media before using 

scratch media" This setting will force BE to overwrite B2D files whose retention period is over.

 

Note: Make sure you have installed all the latest Hotfixes and updated remote agent too.

danisimo
Level 3

thank you for taking the time to answer. We want to retain email as far as 6 months. That being said, we currently use incremental retained for a week and weekly retained for a month. 

regarding 1

What makes incremental different from weekly and monthly in terms of settings in Backup Exec? I have incremental exchange backup running and    under general settings it is set to use "incremental - using archive bit" and monthly and weekly backup jobs are set to use "Full - using archive bit". Both generate IMG folders and .bfk files but both IMG folders are of the same size being 140GB which is the size of the exchnage database. How can both be of the same size but one being incremental and the other beeing full.

regarding 3

I have made the changes. all this time I have been removing IMG folders manually using this help article from symantec: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH66499&actp=search&viewlocale=en_U... ,This is because from what I have read is that GRT does not follow the media set overwrite period. Now in my B2D folder I have lots of old IMG folders that have nothing except this ese.dll file. Will these now be deleted based on the changes I have made? since I have removed the IMG folders manually, is the media in Backup Exec pointing to those IMG folders.

Thank you again for taking the time to help me

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi,

 

1. Depending on the size of your Exchange Information Store and the log files, doing Daily backups along with Weekly & Monthly backups can be a good option. You're clearing your log files every night, and your restores will be a lot quicker too with Full backups. I do this and have yet to not restore data from Exchange.

2. You would define your media set periods depending on what your company wants, or what you deem best practice to adequately back up and restore your Exchange environment. Remember, some people want data from months/weeks before, so setting it correctly would be beneficial for you.

3. Set your Append/OPP periods lower and see what it does in terms of clearing up the files.

 

Thanks!