Exchange EDB File not being Backed Up?

[gr8gonzo]

Ok, so I've been doing a bricks-level backup of my Exchange server for a while now, but it's just taking too long nowadays, so I'm trying out Ontrack Powercontrols to see if I can just back up the .EDB file instead.

I -THOUGHT- the EDB file (and its companion files) was being backed up. In my backup job details, those files ARE selected to be backed up. When I look at the job logs/history, there's no error messages saying files have been skipped or anything. However, when I go to do a restore, those files are not available to be restored. Am I missing something here?

- Jonathan

 

[steveot]

IF your using the Exchange Agent provided by Veritas, these file are backed up with the agent and you wont see them as individual files. So in your restore selection if you have the icon for the IS and Mailboxes then your covered. If your running BE 9.x and if you select these files at the file level and using the exchange agent, BE 9.x will only back it up thru the agent. Its called Active file exclusion...why backup something twice basically.

Its another story of you exchange logs are not being flushed. Backup Exec should flush them providing you are using the Exchange Agent and its backing up sucessfully. If its not, run NT BACKUP and turn on detailed logging. If you get any errors then you need to run the Exchange utils to defrag/repair the IS

 

[gr8gonzo]

Okay, I think we're on the right track here. I -do- have the Exchange Agent installed, but in the job setup, I deselected the Exchange Mailboxes item because I did not want to back up the mailboxes at bricks-level. I figured since I had unchecked that selection, that it would automatically pick up the EDB files, since they were still checked in the filesystem selection.

The Information Store selection is still checked, but I'm not sure how to restore just the EDB file to a different location. I simply want to end up with the unmounted store in a particular folder. The Exchange Redirection (in the Restore job) looks as if it will restore and automatically mount the IS on a different server. I appreciate the help you've provided - can you give me any direction on this, too?

Many thanks in advance,
Jonathan

 

[Zelandakh]

Jonathan, I think you would benefit from reading this forum for everything about Exchange back ups.

EDBs cannot be backed up by BE online.

You dont restore just the EDB. You need the transaction logs to make the store.

If you don't do brick level, what happens when your users delete emails?

And lastly, how big is your mail store to want to ignore it?

<signature for rent>

 

[gr8gonzo]

That is sort of the point of the OnTrack PowerControls utility. It lets you extract individual messages and/or mailboxes from an unmounted EDB file.

I've been struggling with the bricks-level backup for months now. Ever since I installed Symantec's MailSecurity for Exchange (v4.0), the bricks-level has been extremely slow (sometimes taking up to 17 hours just for the mailboxes alone). I've read every article I could and tried everything, but that bricks-level is EXTREMELY slow. And I figured that Symantec was at fault, but even turning off their service completely and ensuring no auto-protect processes were running had no effect - still too slow. So I figured, if this PowerControls tool can restore bricks-level from an unmounted EDB file, then I can skip that part of the backup. Since doing that, my entire backup is down from 19 hours to 2 hours!

 

[vto]

Another way to do it is to stop all your Exchange services then create a copy of all three edb files in the server. A 4 GB PRIV.EDB will usually takes 5 minutes to create a copy of its own in the same physical and partition drive. Now you can run Veritas BackupExec and select the whole \exchsrvr\DSADATA and \exchsrvr\MDBDATA folders. BE will only backup your copy version of the edb files.

Enjoy!