Exchange Writer vs. Exchange Agent 1

[stevedeb]

According to article 265159 on Veritas website you can only use Exchange Writer or Exchange Agent. What is the difference? I am new to Veritas and Exchange 2003 and it's backup procedures. I selected to bakup everything (no M: to avoid anymore) but got the error mentioned in the article. I shut of the Exchange Writer and left Agent on as article mantioned. I will run my nightly full tonight to see if it makes a difference. Would someone please explain the difference between these two components to me?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[stevet3]

Exchange 2003 writer in a nutshell is a type of shadow copy service or Open File option. Using the writer you have to recover the whole exchange IS, etc. And you need to use NTbackup or Veritas to run a FULL job that eventually flushes the exchange logs. If you use the Veritas Exchange agent you have the added feature of brick level mailbox backups and of course backing up the exchange server hot. Plus a FULL IS backup will flush the Exchange Logs. You cant use both in the same job..basically because two processes try to backup the IS at the same time.

 

[justin2000]

Exchange Writer:-
- Uses MS Volume Shadow Copy to take a snapshot of the IS.
- You can only do Full backups with this method.
- Log backups will be inclulded with Version 10 of BE, just as long as SP1 is installed on Exchange 2003.
- Is generally faster than Exchange agent.

Exchange Agent:-
- Uses the old technology of ESE to do the backup.
- Can do log backups
- As stevet3 says, u can also do mailbox backups.

When using BE, both need an Exchange option license installed.

 

[stevedeb]

Thanks for the info. Is the shadow copy option of using Writer available even if I didn't buy Exchange Agent? It seems like it should be if it is a built-in MS service. I ask this b/c I am going to run multiple Exchange servers and do not want to buy sw that I don't need.

I have no need or desire for Mailbox level backup or restore. My requirements are for disaster recovery only. Deleted message retention is 7 days, same as backup rotation. If they can't get it from there then I can't recover it anyways.

Also, how do the Exchange backups interact with the Intelligent Disaster Recovery plug in. I bought that also b/c it was pretty cheap. I haven't tried it yet. I would like to be able to boot off of the recovery disk and restore an entire server, Exchange and all.

 

[stevedeb]

Sorry about the second reply, I have another question if you don't mind.

How is the interaction of the Exchange Agent and the Exchange Writer with a Recovery Storage Group. I have used RSG with NTBackup (this would be using Writer?). How does it work with the Veritas Agent?

Steve

 

[justin2000]

stevedeb

The RSG works in the same way with BE Exchange agent.

When you create a RSG and attach a mailbox store to it - whenever you do a restore using Ntbackup or BE, the restore will automatically go to the RSG.

Even when using Exchange shadow copy backups with BE, you still need a license for it.

Exchange restores using IDR are done after the server is back up and running after IDR has been completed (does that make sense?)
IDR will only let you recover the file system,system state and the master, model and msdb databases in SQL(if you have them)

 

[stevedeb]

Justin,

I think that makes sense, but let me clarify. Using IDR will recover the server to a running state but not Exchange. Will I need to reload the Exchange App or just the databases?

Could you run me through a quick step by step(it doesn't need to be detailed, just a "do this then do that")? I would like to be able to try it myself but I do not have a platfom that matches the Exchange server (or even comes cloes) to try it on. I certainly don't want to try it on the live 1.

Thanks,
Steve

 

[justin2000]

After IDR, you will need to recover the Store's, do this as normal.

1. Dismount the stores.
2. Set them to allow to be overwritten by a restore.