backup recommendations for Enterprise Vault 8 using SAN

[HKP11]

Backup recommendations for Enterprise Vault 8 using SAN

I would like recommendations on backups of Enterprise Vault 8 data on SAN. The SQL database backups should be straightforward, but not sure about the vauld data on the SAN disks. What is the best way to backup the data (not SQL)? How often?

Thanks

[Wayne_Humphrey]

Dependent on your needs.  Its like saying I need a fast car, what do i get?

Be more specific? What is your SLA? What is an acceptable update time to your indexes? How large are your indexes expected to be after 5 years, etc etc....

If its large amounts of data, then backing up is a no go, you will have to do replication, or snapshots or both :)

--wayne

[Rob_Wilcox1 · Accepted solution]

There is also a PDF Guide included in EV 8, which might help.

[Liam_Finn1]

 What we do is we perform an index and vault backup every night once the FSA and mailbox archiving runs complete and at the same time we do a full backup of our databases to file (.bak) that way our indexes, vaults and databases are in sync

Also during the day every 15 mins we do a log file truncate to disk so if anything happens to our databases the most we loose is ia mins of data. We do this because we also journal our mailboxes

[Itzik_Gur]

I agree with Scanner001, the key is that all you EV component backups are consistent and in Synch - i.e. EV databases, Vault Store/s and Index. The EV server system state is also important but not critical.

Typically I'd suggest looking at it in the following order:

1. Backup your Exchange/File Server data
2. Run the archicing tasks
3. Put EV in beckup mode and backup the above component at the same time.

You can run the following nightly provided you want to archive every night.

Depending on your envirnment setup and config, you might be able to utilise snapshots and the likes but be sure the put EV in backup mode so that nothing is being added to the archive or database while you are trying to back up.

If you are running Journal archive, which is running continuously, you can take snapshots but there will be no guarantee that you will have a consistent backup. You can create a schedule that every 1-2hrs (depending on your SLA's) will allow you to put EV into backup mode, take a snapshot + replicate your components and bring it back to Read/Write mode - this should ensure that the EV queues are being emptied.

Cheers,
Itzik

[JVL]

Only for the mailbox archiving, when a vault store is closed and totally collationed and when users can't delete items from their archives, can we consider that the concerned vault store closed could be excluded from the backup if we already have a good backup file of it ?

In other words, in this specific case, did vault store closed will never be modified again ?

Thanks
 

[Liam_Finn1]

Even is a Vault is closed it can still have changes written to it so if I were you I would not exclude it from backups.

You could however do weekly backups on it instead of daily backups but never exclude it

[JVL]

What kind of changes could affect a vault store closed with user deletion forbidden ? Is there a document which explain it...

Thanks