Exchange backups? 2

[nicowahoo]

I would like to know if the Veritas NetBackup Agent for Exchange is capable of backing up Exchange at the brick level. Also, what are the ramifications of brick-level backups (i.e. increase in overhead or additional storage, etc.)?

 

[xmario2013]

personally I never used the Netbackup product, but in the regular backup exec product line, I know Exchange agent does not do brick level backup, it required another module called "Intelligent Disaster Recovery option" that does the brick level backup, I recommand you ask your Vertias rep to get the exact detail and research more info on your own to figure out if this product would work in your environment

for brick level backup, look at this quick article

http://www.ultrabac.com/kb6/htm/UBQ000042.htm

MAR

 

[steveot]

Incorrect All version of backup exec offer information store and brick level backup with the exchange agent option.
Intelligent Disaster Recovery option has nothing to do with Exchange it just a faster/automated way to recover a server.

In Backup Exec 11d you can backup the information store only and restore mailboxes from a information store backup.

 

[johnny99]

NBU does support mailbox backup.

IDR was an option that could help you with DR of a server.
In NBU 6.0 and forward IDR isn't supported any longer.

When NBU is taking a mailbox backup it has to pull the data out using the MAPI interface and that is slow. Very slow.

I haven't used mailbox backup in production, but what I do is that I restore the maildatabase to the recovery group and then restore the users data that way (in my case using a special tool for it)

/johnny

 

[Vela]

You can use Exchange 'brick' backups in production. If you have 50000 mailboxes, it still might take alot of time.

I found that setting up the 'brick' backup policy file-list this way can reduced the backups by 1/2 the amount time of a regular full backup of all mailboxes at once in one policy.

I have our Exchange backups split into 5 different policies.

Name the policies something like

[servername]_mail_a-e

Next you setup the file list within this policy exactly as follows.

Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes:\[A-E]*

this will only backup the users within the A-E range

You can setup 4 more policies in a similar fashion with file lists as below.

Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes:\[F-J]*
Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes:\[K-O]*
Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes:\[P-S]*
Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes:\[T-Z]*

 

[nicowahoo]

Thank you all for your reponses.

Vela, this was more what I was looking for in regards to breaking down the mailboxes into seperate policies.

 

[Vela]

well....gimme a star darnit!

just kidding..

 

[MaineDCAdmin]

Or.... you could put these all in one policy, enable multiple data streams, and put in the new stream command (ref: NBU 5.1 Exchange Sys Admin Guide p35). The advantage to doing it this way is all of your exchange mailbox backups are called from one Policy, making administration simpler when in a larger environment. As always YMMV

 

[EnochChum]

I found that trying to do brick-level backups took way too long using netbackup due to too many mailboxes. Perhaps your company could look into using a different tool to extract mailboxes from a restored exchange db.

 

[johnny99]

We use Ontrack

See

http://www.ontrackpowercontrols.com/

/johnny

 

[Stee804]

Excellent info in this thread.
I have an additional question to add on.

Should the regular exchange agent be backing up a snapshot?
Or do I need the advanced client?

I am constantly running into the "Open Mailbox" error, where the boxes are not being backed up because they are open.

 

[Stee804]

Was that a stupid question?

 

[johnny99]

I wouldn't say stupid. Not at all.
I just don't understand what it is you ask.

Using a snapshot and then talk about "Open Mailbox" seems a little unconnected to me.

/johnny

 

[Stee804]

Ah, ok,

Well, heres whats happening.
My Exchange Mailbox backups always finish with a status code of 1.
I assume I am getting a status code of 1 because VSP is not enabled, which means I'm backing up a live database, and the mailboxes that were being skipped were being accessed at the time of backup.

My question is, Does the Exchange Option license automatically entitle me to the VSP function that is normally unavailable without the advanced client license?

I have looked on the symantec site with no success.
And thanks for answering.

 

[johnny99]

If you have the Netbackup Enterprise server then the Open File backup is included in the normal client licens.

But when you do a mailbox backup you backup mailboxes using MAPI and that has nothing to do with VSP or VSS.

But I don't understand why you need to do mailbox backup.
For all the years I have been running Exchange I haven't ever used mailbox backup for anything in production since the speed of the MAPI interface to Exchange is soo slow that it takes forever to finish the backups.

If you are running Exchange 2003 you now even have the RECOVERY GROUP where you can restore a mail database.

As I wrote before I have been using OnTrack for years to help me when I had to recover single items out of a mailbox.
OnTrack can do this directly from a maildatabase.

If you get Status Code 1 look in the logfiles and see if there is more information on the error.
It can be that you have to make the logdirectories and raise the logging level.
Remember to restart the Netbackup service on the client since it only check for the logdirectories at startup

/johnny

 

[dukbtr]

We have actually stopped doing mailbox backups. The load on the media servers (I/O) was too much and not to mention the shoe shining on the drives because of the incredibly slow throughput. We just do the Information Stores and do our restores to the recovery group.

If you have to do mailbox level backups, one solution is to identify the key people that need that kind of protection, such as director level and up, or whatever it might be in your case. Have the Exchange admin put these people in there own group and just do mailbox backup for this group. I have personally never done this but have spoke to others that have and they say it works well.

 

[Stee804]

Thanks Guys

 

[onavatte]

Another new hopeful solution could come from microsoft itself:

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dpm/beta/overview.mspx

To summarize, DPM is a shadow copy server. It can gather shadows from clients to a single server. It works as a backup client actually.
If you install a Netbackup client on the DPM server (Windows 2003 only, for the VSS support), you'll be able to backup thoses shadows into tapes through Netbackup.

It sounds just like another disk-to-disk-to-tape solution but with the next version (DPM 2007), it'll be able to take databases snapshots like Exchange, MSSQL and Sharepoint. And it'll handle brick-level Exchange snapshots.

As the product is pretty cheap and supports all microsoft standards, it could be a usefull solution to replace uneffective Netbackup database agents. (Microsoft database only by the way).

I'm going to test it as soon as I can find enought time.


Olivier

 

[xmsre]

The current release version of DPM is not exchange aware and does not truncate the logs. Only in the 2007 do you see these features under development. Someday, they'll get it right and release 2007 (given the track record probably won't work right until SP2). Until then, you'd be better off with another backup solution.