DAG Exchange Hyper-v level backup

[sudhakarkumar]

Hi everyone,

We have DAG group which is having 4 servers(2 cas servers, 2 mail servers) which all are Hyper-v machines.

currenlty there is a windows state level backup was configured for these servers.

can we proceed for a hyper-v level backup for these servers other than Exchange backup?

taking Hyper-v level backup will anyway effect the Exchange Backup?

Does Windows State backup will help us during disaster for mail servers which are a hyper-v machines?

Can any boday please give a clarrification on this??

our nbu ver:7.7.1

os-windows 2012 r2 standard.

[Lowell_Palecek]

Hyper-V backup does not cause truncation of the Exchange transaction logs. Your Exchange backups will not be missing any data. Is that what you are asking regarding whether it affects your Exchange backups?

A Windows System State backup is not a good DR strategy for your mailbox data. First, Windows file system backups exclude the Exchange data files in order to avoid redundant backup data. You can change your exclusion settings, but if the Exchange databases are not quiescent when the files are backed up, recovery will be similar to crashing the system and bringing it back up. The databases likely would be in a bad state and not mountable without intervention. Transactions that were in process would be lost.

[sudhakarkumar]

can i go for complete hyper-v virttual machine backup and exchange with microsoft database exchange availability groups??

[sudhakarkumar]

During the time of Hyper-v backup, does it allow the Exchange backup. I mean both backups are on the same time.

[Lowell_Palecek · Accepted solution]

I asked the NetBackup developers for Hyper-V:

"Can he run his Hyper-V backup policy at the same time as his Exchange backup policy? The Exchange agent takes snapshots of the volumes on which the databases have data. Does this conflict with a Hyper-V backup?"

Response:

"We’d support it. It would be better to stagger the backups so the volume snapshots in-guest aren’t happening at same time as hyperv snapshots. but again, shouldn’t causing any consistency problems. The quiescing might take a bit longer though."

My explanation of the two kinds of snapshots mentioned in the response: Snapshots of the Exchange data volumes occur "in-guest." That is, the NetBackup Exchange agent executes in Windows inside the VM (the guest), and uses VSS within the Windows OS. Hyper-V snapshots occur outside the VM, as they are snapshots of the volumes on which the VM is deployed.

[sudhakarkumar]

Thank you Palecek,

Now I can proceed to configure both.