Individual Mailbox Backup versus Plain Backups 1

[gomobile]

What are the pro and cons if one chooses to configure EXEC to perform individual mailbox backups versus running incremental and/or monthly backups. Will I run into space
issues or what?

Note: We are a small shop (75 users).

thxs

 

[gwichman]

First off if you only do incremental/full backups, restoring a single mailbox will be a lot more difficult. You'll have to restore the entire server to a seperate machine, export the mailbox, copy it over to the real production exchange server, and import it.

On the other hand, if you only do incremental mailbox backups you'll find restoring an entire server to be a real nightmare. Not only is it slower to backup and restore individual mailboxes, i believe you already need the users defined before it'll let you restore their mailboxes.

For that reason a lot of people will do both. the individual mailboxes are used for day to day restores that can be common in an IT environment (though with only 75 users, you might not find yourself doing these types of restores), and full/incrementals to ensure they can recover their server should there ever be a more serious problem.

 

[bobafet]

Some people base their entire trust in mailbox backups and not worry about backing up the Information Store.
They get caught out because they are unable to restore calendar and contacts to the mailboxes. This is because the calendar and contacts are actually backed up as part of the Information Store.
The calendar and contacts that appear to be backed up in the mailbox backups but are just pointers to the Information Store (where they are physically located).
If you chose to do mailbox backups (Brick Level), make sure you also backup the Information Store.