EV 8 Backup Timings

[JBrockwell]

This is what should be a very basic query, but I have never quite managed to grasp this particular topic for Enterprise Vault.  We will be going live shortly with our Exchange Archiving, and already do Journalling; however our backup schedule is all over the place.  Can anyone shed some light on what order I should be backing things up in; currently I am thinking:

Stop EV Services
Backup Exchange Server mailboxes
Backup SQL Databases (via scheduled maintenance plan? or does anyone have a script to do this within the actual BackupExec backup itself?)
Backup EV Server, system state and all Index Locations;Vault Stores etc
Start EV Services
Start Archiving Run? or should this be done beforehand

Any thoughts, or can you point me in the right direction? I have read through the various admin guides but generally can't get an idea as to what order this should all be completed in.

Many thanks
Jacqui

[vovagrin]

What is the ev version?

You should first switch ev into the Read Only mode (with pre and post backup scripts) then it actualy doesn't metter if you backup Ev server with indexes, Vault stores and system or you start with the SQL since the ev server will not update sql while in the read only mode.
If you are using the maintanence plan in SQL fro backups you should run it while the EV in read only mode for it to be consistent.
If I recall correctly Backup Exec can execute batch file remotly, you have to provide the path where the batch located on the client.
In the EV version 8 there is no more need for restarting or stoping the services.

[JBrockwell]

Hi, and thank you for your reply.

Yes we are using EV8, but I assumed that in order to run the Pre and Post scripts that you would need Enterprise Vault installed on the Backup server itself (which we are unable to do) along with PowerShell (not a problem to install).  Am I reading this incorrectly? and I can in fact run the scripts from the backup server without the need to have Enterprise Vault installed on that specific server? If so, then you are right and this would be much simpler.

Regards
Jacqui

[GertjanA]

Hello Jacqui,

The version of EV is important to know.
Prior to 8, you have to use registry keys to place ev in read-only mode. With 8, you use powershell.

What we do is the following (using 8.0 powershell scripts)
place mbx ev-server in backup mode.
backup systemstate, msmq folder, tempfolder, shoppingfolder, index-disk and store-disk.
backup sqldatabase that belongs to store + the belonging fingerprintdatabase.
place mbx ev-server in normalmode

the directorydatabase, monitoringdatabase and auditdatabase are being backedup twice  a day.

we do not backup ev-data from our journalarchiving servers (calculated risk).

Check the following documents also:
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/322715.htm
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/320845.htm
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/317560.htm
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/enterprise-vault-best-practiceev-backups

There should be a pdf out there about Backing up EV8, but I cannot find it at the moment.

Good luck.