Using differential backups with the Exchange Agent

[cgreen]

I have set up to do a Weekly Full backup with Differentials daily for the rest of the week. I expected this to also back up the Exchange database nightly since I have the db agent options set to Normal backup, but it appears that nothing is being backed up on Exchange when the daily backups run. I would prefer to not set up a seperate backup job for this. How can I ensure that, at minimum, the logs are backed up since it appears they are not being backed up now.

For the record, the full backups are running just fine.

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

When attempting a differential backup of exchange you must ensure that circular logging within exchange is disabled.

guru

 

[cgreen]

I don't use circular logging. Thats bad mojo. The full backups on Sundays are purging the logs and backing up the database as it should. I owuld like it to do the same on a daily basis, but it just seems to skip the IS completely. Any ideas?

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Well, there is a registry hack to force every backup of exchange to be full.

http://support.ca.com/techbases/asnt/NASNT705.html

This is for ARCserveIT but it should still apply for 2000, the keys will look a little different though.

Guru

 

[cgreen]

The keys were actually identical! Thanks. I'll see tonight if that straightened it out!

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Cool, good luck chris.

guru

 

[cgreen]

Well it didn't seem to solve anything. I'm setting the agent to differential instead of Full to see what it does tonight.

Chris Green

 

[cgreen]

Looks like nothing is working and the server refuses to run any backups at all during the daily differential jobs. The full backup runs just fine on Sundays. Anyone else have any ideas before i attempt to deal with CA's worthless support department?

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

when you did the registry hack, are you sure you did it to the letter? Did the backup go through and still do a differential of exchange because if it did then it didn't work. Try deleting the key you created and try it again. If not then CA-support is a callin'....

guru

 

[cgreen]

Its not doing *any* backup of exchange that I can tell on the daily runs. On the weekly it performs a full just like it should. The exchange agent log has entries of "Exceeded Maximum Memory per Connection" and I'm looking for info abou that now.

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Perhaps a re-install and repath of the exchange agent is in order? If you do don't forget to bring it up to appropriate patch levels of sp3 + qo06202.caz (only is the ARCserve server is at sp3 [build 1086]).

I think the agent is pretty screwed up at the moment.

 

[cgreen]

Figured it out apparently. I ran the agent config and set it for Named Pipes instead of TCP/IP. The Diff job last night ran as a full. This is the behavior I was expecting with the registry key set and is much improvement over no backup at all.

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Hang on? you were using TCP/IP?

damn, hehehe oh well as long as it's working now.

guru

 

[cgreen]

Is this a known problem that CA refuses to document or something? Nothing like a useless feature in a product.

"Here you see the option to use the more effecient TCP/IP protocol.... But don't select it because our backups will only work sometimes."

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Well, what happens is that TCP/IP cannot access the bricks using RPC, Named pipes can. TCP is just a protocol and can't make that remote call to the RPC service on the machine which is needed to backup the bricks. However a straight backup of the database is possible with TCP/IP and also it is possible is it is all on the local server with TCP/IP (as the RPC does not come into play).

So, it surprises me that you were able to get a backup of bricks at all using tcp.

g

 

[cgreen]

I don't do brick backups. I hate brick backups. The only backups I care about are IS/DS backups. Apparently it had an issue even doing those properly over TCP/IP.

Chris Green

 

[ARCserveGuru]

oh, ok well now you now why tcp ip doesn't work.

g

 

[cgreen]

Well.. I wouldn't say I know why.... I just know that it doesn't work, and I fixed my issue..... I'd like to report the bug to CA, but I'm not paying for the right to hold and report a bug.

Chris Green