Windows SBS 2008 Backup not working with Exchange 2007

[rlconklin]

We have VSS making shadow copies successfully twice daily. When SBS runs the SBS 2008 Backup for the drives, it does not backup the Exchange mailbox databases. As a workaround, I created a script that dismounts the Exchange mailbox databases, performs the backup, and then remounts the databases successfully at night. The mailboxes are in a dismounted state for approximately 45 minutes. I would feel much better with a full solution instead of this workaround. Any ideas? Thank you.

 

[rlconklin]

1) The logs indicated a VSS problem.

2) I opened the 'Microsoft Exchange Shell' and typed in 'vssadmin list writers'

3) Going with the 'vssadmin list writers' result from before I noticed an error:

Writer name: 'Microsoft Exchange Writer'
Writer Id: {76fe1ac4-15f7-4bcd-987e-8e1acb462fb7}
Writer Instance Id: {3c819912-94b3-488f-9ccf-b55406aeb2bb}
State: [5] Waiting for completion
Last error: Retryable error

4) Upon researching I was able to get it back to the below by resetting the 'Microsoft Exchange Information Store' service and the 'Microsoft Exchange Replication Service':

Writer name: 'Microsoft Exchange Writer'
Writer Id: {76fe1ac4-15f7-4bcd-987e-8e1acb462fb7}
Writer Instance Id: {aa016cf9-a2fb-4432-ba84-94b333ee5901}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

5) Will enable the normal Windows SBS 2008 Backup for tonight and check.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Are you running the native SBS backup utility, using the wizard to configure it? When you aren't using the native backup, what are you using?

Have you ever had something besides SBS native backup backing it up? There are settings you have to turn on when you use a 3rd-party backup that may need to be changed before running a native backup will work properly again, and vis versa. I know that to get earlier versions of StorageCraft to work, for example, you needed to change the VSS settings on the server, and if you were going to go back to using native SBS backup, you may need to change them back for the Exchange backup to work properly.



Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rlconklin]

We are using the SBS backup utility using the wizard.
When I am not using this method (for the work-around), I put some Powershell script together to dismount the Exchange 2007 mailbox database, perform the backup using the SBS backup utility, and then re-enabling the Exchange 2007 mailbox database. This is what I have found from running the standard sbs 2008 backup utility:

Event 565, Backup
Consistency check for component '8653c9e4-dbea-4d51-9bb3-f346ef947b0b'\'Microsoft Exchange Server\Microsoft Information Store\ASB' failed. Application 'Exchange' will not be avaliable in the backup done at time '12/7/2013 11:00:07 PM'
Log Name: Application
Source: Backup
Level: Error
User: System
OpCode: Info

Problem seems to be a consistency issue with the logs. I will take the mailbox database offline and run a consistency check with ESEUTIL tonight.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Actually, the issue is that normally when the SBS Backup runs, it does an Exchange consistency check as part of the backup. When the databases are dismounted, it can't do that. But because you did a proper dismount, the databases are, in fact, already consistent.

When you do a restore, you would NOT do a restore of the Exchange Information Store as an application, since the consistency check has to succeed for that to work. Instead you would restore the actual .edb file as a file. You would mark the database to allow overwrite for a restore. You would restore the file, then you would then clear any logs out of the log directory for that database (just move them all to a subfolder). Then you should be able to mount that database.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rlconklin]

Thanks for the information Dave Shackelford. Your explanation is right on the money. That explains why I am able to successfully backup after doing a clean dismount. Do you think that a dismount / remount before using the SBS 2008 backup and its VSS add-in would allow the backup to proceed properly?

 

[ShackDaddy]

I'm not sure. It depends on the root of the problem you are having with VSS. If it's really a problem with the database state, that might help, but I suspect that it's more of a problem with VSS and specifically with the Exchange VSS Writer, so in that case, dismounting and remounting wouldn't help much.

From the command-line on that server, run "vssadmin list writers" and see what state the Exchange writer is in.

Also, make sure that the drive that the Exchange database is on isn't configured to create ShadowCopies during the same time window that the backup is supposed to run during.

If you see VSS errors in the logs that refer to timeouts, and you've already looked into ShadowCopy creation, then you might want to increase the VSS timeout from 10 minutets to 20 minutes to give certain snapshotting processes more time to complete.

You can manually extend the VSS timeout by editing/creating the following registry key:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SPP\CreateTimeout

This value is in milliseconds, 20mins equal 1200000 milliseconds.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net