Is Exchange Agent Required?

[dsk525]

Hi All,

I recently purchased ARCserve Backup v9. Unfortunatly, the backup has been failing due to two possibilities, one is that I am trying to backup the exchange server (mailboxes, etc.) and it may be crashing as the exchanger services are running. Second possibility is that I do not have the key required for Exchange Server Agent. At the moment, I am backing up without utilizing Exchange Server Agent.

Second quick question, is it possible to automate the backup tape to be formatted right before a backup job is initiated?

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

 

[BillDaly]

You can use most CA products (including all ArcServe products) without registering for 30 days.

To (properly) backup Exchange, you will need to use the agent for Exchange. The Exchange agent takes some time to set up, but you can restore individual folders to mailboxes (but not individual messages, contrary to CA marketing materials).

If you're on a very tight budget and have a small amount of data, you can theoretically use NTBackup on your Exchange server (which gets its own Exchange agent when you install Exchange) to backup to a (very large) BAK file and then use Arcserve to put the BAK file on tape. It's ugly, but better than not backing up Exchange. (A lot of people seem to use a similar method to backup SQL Server databases.)

Another el-cheapo option is to stop all of the Exchange services, backup the EDB/STM/LOG files with ArcServe, and then start the services again. This too is ugly, and you'd have to use circular logging or manually delete LOG files to prevent them from taking over.

 

[mohamdr]

if you use erase as blank tape iarcserve is going to format the tape before use it

 

[Cyklops]

Or you can use the 'overwrite' options (see backup media tab in the options menu). Then a format will be automatically executed right before the backup starts.

 

[ARCserveGuru]

And in the destination tab you can put in the new name that you want the tape to be called (ensuring that the options state that you'll pick up same media name or blank media).

G