Exchange 2013 DAG backup over separate NIC

[cstaubliew]

Hello all

I try to backup a three way Exchange 2013 cluster over a separate NIC without success so far. The setup is as follows:

- 3x Exchange 2013 server, each with 2 active databases in DAG mode, 4 databases as failover mode

- Each server has two NIC, I call the frontend and backend. On frontend NIC there is normal frontend traffic, backend NIC is reserved for backup

- On frontend NIC also DAG is is configured

- Backup infrastructure consists of master and multiple media servers, NetBackup version 7.6, running on Windows 2008 R2

To correctly route the traffic from and to backup servers static route is setup on each server and also entries in hosts file. Normal file level backup works fine, so network setup is correct. According to documentation for DAG backup I need to setup the DAG group name as backup client and point this to the DAG ip. However, as DAG IP is configured on frontend NIC this is not possible. "Normal" exchange backup is also not possible as netbackup client detects correctly this as a DAG cluster.

Does anyone have a similar setup and has successfully run backups on this?

Any help is greatly appreciated

Christian

[Nicolai · Accepted solution]

Had the same issues with a Exchange 2010 DAG cluster. We solved the issue by heavy use of host files to fool data the right way around.  Bascially backup of Exchange DAG via a backup NIC is not supported by Microsoft.

Found a blog with some more details, but the message is clear - unsupported

http://3techies.com/?p=252

[cstaubliew]

Hello Nicolai

That did the trick, many thanks

Christian