BE9.0 - Exchange Backup Failures 1

[ngagne]

Just started using BE9.0 on our W2K Server running Exchange 2000. I can run a normal backup on our data files, but when the time comes to backup the Exchange Server I get the following errors:

Job Completion Status:
Job ended: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 at 1:56:25 AM
Completed status: Failed
Final error code: a000fe30 HEX
Final error description: A communications failure has occurred.

Final error category: Server Errors


This seems to happen during the verify stage, although the verification completes successfully according to the job log. I've tried three times to run the backup, each fails with the same result.

Any ideas?

 

[GreenTeeth]

Hi there,

Have a look at the log, you might want to print it out for ease, but just look down it, and look for " ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ " first of all and see what it says above it, you might get a message like:

"the Exchange Store service is not responding. Backup set aborted."

If this is the case, it should also show an error during the Verification also:

"Unexpected end of backup set encountered on ****"

or something like that. See what you can find, and post back.

 

[ngagne]

Upon further review of the logs, I found that the Communications Failure is happening when the First Storage Group is being backed up -

Backed up 2 Exchange Server store(s)
Backed up 0 Exchange Server log(s)
Processed 4,781,876,014 bytes in 22 minutes and 3 seconds.
Throughput rate: 207 MB/min
The connection to target system has been lost. Backup set canceled.

I was doing a search on the web, and found that some who had reported this problem said not to backup the M: drive. I am running another backup now without the M: drive included to see if this helps.

I'm technically competent, but I was thrown into this job unwillingly, so I'm pretty green when it comes to admisitering backups. I don't even have a good grasp on what data is contained in the M: drive - contents of mailboxes???

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[ngagne]

Without the M: drive selected in the backup set, the backup works fine. Does this drive really need to be included to successfully backup Exchange Server?

 

[GreenTeeth]

I am just running BE8.6, but if you are basically backing up your Emails, you will need the following selected;

Microsoft Exchange Directory - Which I beleive lets BE know where everything is and how it is configured

Microsoft Information Store - Which is where all Mailboxes and Emails are actually kept, it is a large database (and be aware, if people don't delete their mail, it Grows and does not shrink back without drastic measures).

And finally the mailboxes - Now you don't have to back these up, but if you want to be able to restore a particular mailbox, you will need this so it is usefull. Restoring just the Information Store will simply restore your exchange server back to what it was at that backup - a pain if you have more that a few mailboxes.

Now anything else that you backup is extra and in my mind given the technology, would be better off on a different server anyway. You don't need the other drives if all you are running is Microsoft Exchange, as I think you will find that for starters they are the applications itself and also most of it can't be backed up easily anyway.

Ok, just found this on the Veritas Knowledge base, it can be very usefull. I typed in M Drive in the search and this came up. This should just give you some clarification and piece of mind.

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/255814.htm

Hope some of this helps.

 

[ngagne]

YES!!! Thanks!!!!