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online or offline? Pros and cons
- Thread starter mike722
- Start date
Mike,
There are'nt really that many differences between the two. I generally do an offline back-up once every two months.
However, any disaster recovery exercises i have practiced with have always involved online backup restores to a server recovery server with the same name with no snags.
I think its a matter of personal choice dictated by the situation you are. If you have plenty of time and numerous oppurtunities to bring down your server to be backed up, then go for it. It all makes good practice for every conceivable senario.
There are a number of articles on Technet that discuss backup solutions for 5.5. Have a ponder.
Cheers
There are'nt really that many differences between the two. I generally do an offline back-up once every two months.
However, any disaster recovery exercises i have practiced with have always involved online backup restores to a server recovery server with the same name with no snags.
I think its a matter of personal choice dictated by the situation you are. If you have plenty of time and numerous oppurtunities to bring down your server to be backed up, then go for it. It all makes good practice for every conceivable senario.
There are a number of articles on Technet that discuss backup solutions for 5.5. Have a ponder.
Cheers
I have only used offline backups when I had to do high risk changes.
Normaly offline backups are of no real use since you would have to restore and reapply your logs (if you only lost your database)
D/R from and online backup works fine (if you can say anything good about ex 5.5 backup/restore)
But since our shop is an 24/7/365 offline has also never been an option.
What would be nice was to get better backup performance because we get less the 10MB/s on the online backup, but again offline is not realy an option in our installation.
Normaly offline backups are of no real use since you would have to restore and reapply your logs (if you only lost your database)
D/R from and online backup works fine (if you can say anything good about ex 5.5 backup/restore)
But since our shop is an 24/7/365 offline has also never been an option.
What would be nice was to get better backup performance because we get less the 10MB/s on the online backup, but again offline is not realy an option in our installation.
If you read any of the disaster recovery white papers from Microsoft, you'll notice that they strongly prefer online backups.
The backup software you use will have some bearing on this issue, of course. All third-party applications require a separate Exchange module in order to perform online backups. The advantage is that the backup program will clean out unneeded transaction log files following the backup. Additionally, the only action needed following a restore with most programs is running the Isinteg utility. The best program I've seen from a restore perspective is Legato NetWorker. To restore an Exchange IS, you simply open the Legato Exchange client, select the database to restore, and click on start. When the status window indicates the restore in complete, the server is up and running - no further user action required as NetWorker runs the Isinteg automatically.
If you don't have a third-party backup program, use NTBackup.
Bob
The backup software you use will have some bearing on this issue, of course. All third-party applications require a separate Exchange module in order to perform online backups. The advantage is that the backup program will clean out unneeded transaction log files following the backup. Additionally, the only action needed following a restore with most programs is running the Isinteg utility. The best program I've seen from a restore perspective is Legato NetWorker. To restore an Exchange IS, you simply open the Legato Exchange client, select the database to restore, and click on start. When the status window indicates the restore in complete, the server is up and running - no further user action required as NetWorker runs the Isinteg automatically.
If you don't have a third-party backup program, use NTBackup.
Bob
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