Exchange off site backup

[darren97]

I want to backup our exchange data, approx 30Gb, off site to a data centre. Our office connectivity is bog standard 2Mb DSL. I need some advice though. I plan to copy the priv and pub databases to a usb device and take them to the data centre. I will then copy the transactional log files to the data centre once a night. I don't want to use any expensive 3rd party solutions as I am sure this can be achieved (I am more than happy to stop the exchange services for an hour per night for example).
I need advice on the transaction logs locally and off site. Am i correct in saying that as long as I have my priv and pub databases (edb and stm) at the data centre and my log files are copied to the data centre every night, then, in the event that my production server fails I can replay the log files and I will have the exchange data up to date. I also need advice on the fact that although I will copy the transaction logs from local to remote every night, what happens if I do a full backup locally and the log files get merged and then deleted? I would really appreciate some advice on this or pointers to any articles etc.

Regards, Darren

 

[RichardHuang]

If you don't want to use thirdparty software, you can use ntbackup to conduct full Exchange backup every night and then copy those data to your data centre the next day. If you have separate harddrives for the log files and database files, I don't see any necessarity to copy the logs separately. Because it's unlikely both harddisks fail at the same time. You either have the logs available or the database available if the server crashes.

 

[darren97]

Hi Richard

Thanks for that, appreciate your reply. We are currently using ntbackup to tape, works fine, I am looking for a solution to 'complement' the existing solution. I don't want to carry out full ntbackups each night and then copy to the data centre the next day because I will be forever copying 30Gb bak files.

I think I will run test labs to see if this will work.

Regards, Darren