Information Store Backup Question

[amigo02]

I use windows backup utility (2003 small business server) to backup our exchange information store.

Backup completes successfully and in the backup utility I go to Restore and Manage Media and open the catalog file I recently used to see if exchange is backed up correctly and it shows the following:

Information store\First Storage Group
Log Files ............ No entries found
Mailbox Store......... No entires found
Public folder store... No entries found

also in the catalog file under C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA folder I see the files are much smaller in size than they are actually in the same folder in hard disk.

Is it normal, am I being backed up properly? How can I safely test a restore without loosing any data in hard disk

 

[sundance1980]

I ahev never used windows backup, but when it is complete does it show logs...showing that it was successful?

One thing you may want to do it try to restore to a test network. If you have an extra box around through exchange on it and test it out. It wont hurt.

 

[jahlmer]

amigo02,

It's normal to see 'no entries found', they won't show up as actual files to the right (thats why), but as long as their checked and don't show as having errors (like sundance1980 says) in the backup log you should be OK. But, always good to VERIFY the backup works by using another machine/server and performing a restore to create your disaster recovery plan. Trust me, a big P.I.T.A., but it's worth it to run into surprises about the restore now rather than when you're business is depending on during disaster recovery.

Hope this helps. :1

 

[Excalibur1701]

NTBackup works fine for us. It doesn't provide brick-layer backups, but, that's not too important for us and it's free.

You are correct, when you go look at your tapes, it will say "No Entries Found". Make sure to look at your logs though to verify that the backups are working. It will tell you how many bytes you are backing up there.

 

[RenC]

Excalibu1701,

We are trying to use NetBackup to backup up our exchange server. The server has two nic cards, one for the public network and one for the private network. When we use the public network, everything backs up fine. When we use the private network, we can backup up individual mailboxes, but not the store. Do you know if there is some special configuration we need to do in Exchange to get it to recognized multiple nic cards?

Thanks