There are several tricks for quicker exchange backups. One is to do multiple
incremental backups, which uses logfiles and truncates them. One site I know
with several very large (800+ GB) message stores runs a NetBackup
incremental (using the Exchange agent) 4 times per day to a DSU and a full
backup at the end of the month, and expires data on the DSU after 75 days. 

In this client's case, the DSU is backed up to a remote site for DR using
replication (NSI DoubleTake, I believe) and never goes to tape. A complete
recovery (DR) would be from the full (tape) and then from the DSU, so it
doesn't really matter that it might take 120 restores. They're disk based
and NBU keeps track of it all. TTR is likely as good as tape in this case
and they have a great RPO for brick-level recoveries for the past month.

Mike - 80GB should not be taking 24 hours. There's something wrong or you
have many thousands of small mailboxes with relatively small quotas. How
many storage groups? What do you think the bottleneck is?

The reason that I've heard that Symantec hasn't addressed the whole MTA
thing with some spiffy scheme is that the next generation of Exchange is due
to use a real database, like SQL Server 2005 that will use the database
facility for incremental backup. I've heard this since Exchange 2003 came
out...

Mickey Baker
Fort Lauderdale, FL 
(Independent Consultant)

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Barber, 
Layne
(Contractor)
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 2:19 PM
To: Mike Day; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Exchange Brick Level Backups

It won't be any better. It still uses MAPI in 6.0 to read each mailbox.
As long as it does this, it will ALWAYS be SLOOOWWWW! 

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Mike Day
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 12:35
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Exchange Brick Level Backups

I'm upgrading from 4.5 FP9 to 5.1 and then to 6.x (current version).
Have brick level backups improved with these version upgrades?  I
remember when I've tried to do our 80 GB brick level backups a year ago
I think the best speed I ever got was about 24 hours.  

We just upgraded the Exchange server to the GB switch so Information
Store backups which took about 2.2 hours before now only take about 40
minutes.  

I presume my brick level backups should now only take about 8 hours on
the Gigabit switch, which just might fit in my backup window but it
would be cutting it close.  

Am I correct to assume this or has version 5 or 6 improved the brick
level backup performance or does Symantec have a product designed for
brick level backups?

Thanks,
Mike Day

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