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Exchange GRT, Catalog Impact

Matt_Galvin
Level 3

Hi all,

I've done as much reading & searching as I can muster on this topic but my understanding is still not 100%, well not even 50% actually!

We're an organisation of 4000ish mailboxes and are in the middle of an exchange upgrade, currently we don't use GRT but are exploring enabling it.

What I'm looking to understand is the catalog impact to using exchange GRT, from my own searching there is no clear answer to this.

So my questions are:

  1. Are all messages cataloged or is the image 'mounted' & explored at the time of browsing for an item?
  2. Are all backup methods & subsequent GRT cataloging handled the same way, Vmware, Streaming & Snapshot?
  3. Given the size of our enviroment, the requirement for GRT & the fact we're a Vmware house, is there a reccommended configuration? Vmware based, Streaming or Snapshot?

From what I've read the admin guide doesn't go into detail on the topic. This article suggests the data is catalogued but this rather old one suggests the opposite.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Lowell_Palecek
Level 6
Employee

1. At backup time, NetBackup catalogs to the mailbox level. The backup image is mounted to find the messages at browse and restore time.

1b. However, when you duplicate a backup image, you have the option to catalog everything. This option is on by default. You need to opt out if you don't want this behavior.

1c. You can catalog everything without duplicating the image if you so desire, via bpduplicate -bc_only. ("Build catalog only.")

2. All backups are (almost) treated the same way.

2a. VMware backups that protect Exchange 2007 and 2010 do not catalog mailboxes. This is because the GRT phase would take too long during application state capture (ASC), and unduly delay the VM backups. In this case, mailboxes are also mined from the backup image at browse and restore time. You can do bpduplicate -bc_only if you like.

2b. VMWare backups that protect Exchange 2013 and 2016 do catalog mailboxes, provided you haven't disabled the NetBackup Discovery Framework service (nbdisco) on the clients. NetBackup discovers the mailboxes in advance because most text attributes of a mailbox aren't in the database anymore. They're only in AD. Pulling the attributes via PowerShell is slow and resource-intensive. Since NetBackup has to discover the mailboxes for non-VMware backups, we might as well use the results for VMware backups, too.

2c. The Microsoft API for streaming backups is not available from Exchange 2010 forward, so it's almost not worth considering anymore. Veritas has announced that NetBackup 8.0 is the last release to support Exchange 2007. But no, the streaming API does not apply to protecting Exchange in a VMware backup. See point 3.

3. The important thing about Exchange on VMware is to make sure all the data you need is on a type of disk that can be snapshot in the VMware backup. The Exchange phase (ASC) of the backup doesn't back up any data; it only catalogs. See the documentation on this point.

View solution in original post

2 REPLIES 2

Lowell_Palecek
Level 6
Employee

1. At backup time, NetBackup catalogs to the mailbox level. The backup image is mounted to find the messages at browse and restore time.

1b. However, when you duplicate a backup image, you have the option to catalog everything. This option is on by default. You need to opt out if you don't want this behavior.

1c. You can catalog everything without duplicating the image if you so desire, via bpduplicate -bc_only. ("Build catalog only.")

2. All backups are (almost) treated the same way.

2a. VMware backups that protect Exchange 2007 and 2010 do not catalog mailboxes. This is because the GRT phase would take too long during application state capture (ASC), and unduly delay the VM backups. In this case, mailboxes are also mined from the backup image at browse and restore time. You can do bpduplicate -bc_only if you like.

2b. VMWare backups that protect Exchange 2013 and 2016 do catalog mailboxes, provided you haven't disabled the NetBackup Discovery Framework service (nbdisco) on the clients. NetBackup discovers the mailboxes in advance because most text attributes of a mailbox aren't in the database anymore. They're only in AD. Pulling the attributes via PowerShell is slow and resource-intensive. Since NetBackup has to discover the mailboxes for non-VMware backups, we might as well use the results for VMware backups, too.

2c. The Microsoft API for streaming backups is not available from Exchange 2010 forward, so it's almost not worth considering anymore. Veritas has announced that NetBackup 8.0 is the last release to support Exchange 2007. But no, the streaming API does not apply to protecting Exchange in a VMware backup. See point 3.

3. The important thing about Exchange on VMware is to make sure all the data you need is on a type of disk that can be snapshot in the VMware backup. The Exchange phase (ASC) of the backup doesn't back up any data; it only catalogs. See the documentation on this point.

Thanks for the detailed response, everything I needed to know.