Two questions BUE 8.6

[ashleym]

1. Doing a remote backup of exchange (backup drive is on another server, other then exchange, we are using the exchange agent for BUE), the IS is almost 17G and takes just under half an hour to back up at just over 560MB/min, however when it gets to the mailboxes, the speed drops to 38MB/min and takes almost 8 hours. We recently replaced the DLT drive with an HP Ultrium and also switched from the onboard scsi controller to an LVD controller. We are backing up Exchange 5.5 SP4 on NT Server SP6a. How can we speed up the mailbox backups?

2. Other then the Exchage direcroty, IS and mailboxes, is there anything else I should be backing up to do a restore? The environment is windows 2000 AD, the exchange server is running on an NT 4 memeber server, SP6a. I am presently just backing up exchange, nothing else on the exchange server.

Thanks

AM

 

[packdragon]

Sorry I don't know the answer to question #1, but as for question 2, it's usually a good idea to back up System State for your important servers. If ever something should corrupt a server and cause it to fail, you should be able to restore the system state and have it back to the way it was when it was backed up.

 

[ashleym]

You read my post right? In question 2 I clearly state that exchange is running on NT4, there is no system state in NT4, that was introduced in windows 2000, but if you are suggesting I should be backing up the registry, thank you.

AM

 

[ZmanS1]

The first thing you need to do is to stop backing up the exchange server with a remote agent. Back Exec is a groupware product designed for locally attached single stream backups. Ideally you want to have backup Exec Installed locally on the exchange server with a locally attached library. The Remote backup agent for Backup Exec is really not very good, especially for brick level backups. Before we upgraded to Exchange 2000 I used to backup 2 Exchange 5.5 servers with both InfoStores between 30-35 GBs. A local Brick level backup took between 22-27 hours for each 5.5 server. Since mailboxes contain a large amount of small files the save stream throughput is extremely slow (in your case your barely above .5 MBystes\sec), and Backup Exec is limited to only one save stream per tape device. Brick level backups for InfoStores above 15 GBs becomes impractical. To resolve this you have 2 options: Veritas offers an application that strips the infoStore of duplicate attachments and stores them on near-line storage. Veritas has a free data analyzer you can run against your infostore (Each of my old 5.5 boxes comprised of about 28 GB of attachments each while messages took up only a few GBs). I would suggest this solution only if you do not plan to upgrade to Exchange 2000 anytime soon. If you plan to upgrade you can take advantage of the data\mail retention feature in Exchange 2000. We use a 60 day retention policy that allows users to retreive messages and attachements that were "permamently" deleted from their mailbox. This does require a single reg key change on each client workstation (NT4, 2k or XP). This feature eliminates the need for brick level backups. As for question #2, the answer is no. you are backing all that you need. Just make sure you set Backup Exec to Flush Commited logs after each successful backup. Hope I helped out.