backing up server

[helpdesk2005]

hello everyone i was told that there currently is no tape backup that exists to back up exchange 5.5 mail - is this correct? i want to back up my users emails - 100+ users. Any suggestions is welcome. Thank you.

 

[zbnet]

Not true. When you installed Exchange 5.5, it patched the windows backup program to make it Exchange-aware. You can use it to make online backups of your Exchange database - in fact you should be doing, regularly. If you're not, you either have circular logging enabled, or you have a disk that is filling up with transaction logs - either situation is Bad News, and will bite you sooner or later.

It sounds like you would benefit from reading the 5.5 DR whitepaper, mandatory reading for every production Exchange admin:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/55/support/exdisrec.mspx

 

[helpdesk2005]

wow am i ever glad to hear you say that zbnet. i found it ludacris not to be able to back up your emails. I will read the link you sent. So you are saying i can indeed back these up to tapes or something ? or it's just a backup of the db that is kept on the same server? or to another server/disk array? thanks!

 

[zbnet]

A backup to the disk on the same server is useless when your server catches fire, or when the disk array blows up. Backup to tape, and if you care about the ability to recover the data then the very minimum you should do is put the tape in a fireproof safe - preferably offsite somewhere.

 

[helpdesk2005]

ok good - that's what i was looking for. i'm guessing that you currently backup your exchange - what type of tape drives are you using or what do you suggest i use? thanks.

 

[zbnet]

Use tapes that are appropriate to your server data volumes - we use DLT tapes in production, because I don't trust the robustness of DAT for mission-critical data.