Netbackup 7.1 and Exchange 2010.

[Ramiro-Magan]

Hi, I have just a question I have not been able to find an answer to:

I am running an 7.1.0.4 environment over Windows, and my question is about backups for Exchange 2010.

I am doing granular backups with the agent, and all is good, but I don´t quite understand what is the role that incremental backups have in this. 

I mean, I see every little detail on the full backup, each mailbox, etc, but on the incremental, the only thing I see are the logs.

So, if I want to do a restore for a mailbox, lets say on Friday, and the full backup was on Sunday, so I have 4 days of incrementals, can I recover the mailbox  to Thursday? If so, please explain me how. I read the pdf on exchange backups, but I see nothing there.

[V4]

Firstly you need to get deep dive in Exchange itself .Play it well it's amazing and i love MS for this.

Information store and transaction logs::: Go to msexchange.org it would help alot

Whenever user send/recives mail or perform any operational task with their mailbox. this transactions are not directly written to information store database (.edb) they are written first to transaction logs , then from logs they are written to information store, EDB is known to be very much busy in responding all the queries by users , exchange admins brother and sister server etc. so during transaction logs are written there is check point made to how much is written and how much is  left. Now backup comes  in picture, Post Full backup , Backup application would send instruction to Exchange to enfore truncation of transaction logs

(PS: there are many rumors i'd say every one has perception that backup application truncates the logs, its false, it's exchange's responsibility to truncate them, not backup application's backup app would only inform exchange on backup status, so exchange  get's sigh of relief that it is safe now ;) (don't bother on my explaination ;)

Now coming to your query

With Full backup done on sunday, and subsequent incrementals till friday,  on friday server got crashed ooooooo

time to recover recent data

BROWSE through BAR GUI select backup dates from Sunday Full to Subsequent incrementals till thursday or friday if you are lucky enough... restore process would restore sunday database and trnasaction logs first, then during subsequent incremental restoration checkpoint would be mapped to validate if transaction logs  were committed or not, same process would continue till thursdays'

you are back with thursday data... (with loss of friday's mailing :-()

Hope above was informative to you

[Ramiro-Magan]

Thanks a bunch Speedfreak, it was indeed very informative, as I have little knowledge on Exchange.

Now I only have 1 remaining question, and it is regarding granular restores and incrementals.

If I am on my Friday afternoon, getting ready for the weekend, and someone comes asking for an email that was sent on Thursday and he deleted. Now I have a full backup on Sunday, the incremental backups til Thursday or Friday, but the only image I can see emails from is the one on Sunday.

So, is there a way to get that? or incremental backups are usefull for the transaction logs and will help in case of a full restore, but not on a granular level one?

[V4 · Accepted solution]

hint

Ask user to recover mail from Deleted items (it's tricky part Exchange 2010 has this dumpster increased to hold upto 14 days of deleted items within mailbox itself)

From NBU perspective , presuming mail item was still there on Sunday backup , you are on good side, you would be able to restore it , but if mail item was after that, you won't be able to

incrementals are supportive to Full backup , it would help you to get data till recent date , now post restore your exchange admin can use exmerge or eseutil to export pst from restored database

[Marianne]

Extract from NBU for Exchange Admin Guide:

You can restore individual items using GRT from the following types of backups:

■ Full or user-directed backups

   Incremental backups are not yet supported.

[Ramiro-Magan]

Thanks Speedfreak, you were indeed VERY helpfull! now I understand a whole lot better how exchange interacts with Netbackup.