GRT Backup of Exchange 2010 (1 problem and 1 question)
I have to admit I was a little confused about the size of the backups created by BE2014 on our Exchange 2010 server. I recently have been doing some house cleaning and came back around to this issue. Our exchange DB is 532GB, but when I backed it up with GRT enabled I was getting backups sized at 950 GB. Slowing down to investigate I think I understand that a 400GB (file folder) is being created that contains the granular restore data (mailboxes, cals, individual emails etc) and then there is the 532GB exchange DB. When performing a restore you are given the option of either a GRT or complete restore and each of the two DB items are selected depending on which operation. Light bulb came on and I'm pretty sure I understand the operation. While I appercitate GRT and have used it, I'm really torn about having to backup the data twice. What I have noticed on occasion is that normally the backup for exchange with GRT is 950GB (or so), but occasionally, the size drops to around the 530GB mark. I look at the contents details and see both databases but the GRT one that is usually around 400GB is only 1GB or so. If I look at the mailbox details, not all of the elements are there. Normally there are about 16 Message folders in a full snapshot. In this case there various numbers of folders (1 to 4 or 5) and seem to contain only events (emails etc) of that day. Oddly the jobs shows that it completed normally and was cataloged correctly. A deeper look at the logs appears to me thatit is really only checking the actual Exchange DB (Infostor) and not the GRT DB so no errors are reported. Bottom line is I am trying to figure out why the occasional GRT DB problem and while I am here does anyone have a better suggestion for Exchnage BU.. Currently, we perform Daily (Mon - Thurs) a GRT enabled Backup to Disk Weekly - A GRT enabled backup to tape (5 week cycle) Monthly - A GRT enabled backup to tape (12 month cycle) My tape subsystem is old and failing more often so I started this project looking to see if I could just use a B2D solution. At a TB per backup .. the answer is no.. Sorry for the long post and the twofer on the questions. Hoping someone can offer a solution and advice. Bob P.S. We are transitioning to Office 365, so at some point Exchange wont be an issue, but for now.. I have to continue on.
Exchange backup to deduplication storage or not?
I'm wondering what are your thoughts about this process... We currently backup our Exchange 2010 server like so. Full backup (MB database and logs) once a week, send it to our deduplication storage and then, duplicate the job to another deduplication storage offsite and also duplicate it to the tape. Incremental everyday to simple disk and duplicate it to another simple disk offsite. When the duplicate job for the tape run, the speed is very slow, yes I know, it's because of the rehydratation process. The total size of the data is almost 1 TB. So the job take, on average, 2 days to run, plus or less 48 hours. During that time, the tape is unavailable for other, critical jobs. I need that tape drive for other jobs, 2 days is too long for me, I want to submit to my boss, the architect of the infrastructure, the point that we should store the full backup to a simple disk storage instead of the deduplication store so that the job of the duplication to the tape is much faster. The point that he will make is that we save a lot of space when storing the full exchange backup to the deduplication storage. But I'm wondering if we save that much space by sending the backup to the dedup storage. I can't find the info of the space that the backup of Exchange take on the dedup itself. What is your experiences and thoughts about this process? Thx for sharing.