Requirements For TSM to Backup Exchange 2007

[rcneff]

We currently use TSM 5.5.1 with the TDP For Exchange to backup our Exchange 2003 environment.

We are looking at moving to Exchange 2007.

I know that there is a TDP Client for Exchange 2007.

I had seen a PowerPoint presentation on the Internet that talked about Exchange 2007 backup with TSM. It mentioned that there was a complimentary product to TDP called TSM for Copy Services that "enables" the VSS support of Data Protection for Exchange.

Is this correct?

What if anything is required beyond the TDP for Exchange in order to properly backup Exchange 2007?

Thanks in advance for any help / thoughts on this topic.

 

[gyuzik]

Your research is correct... You will need to have the BA client install along with copy services and the TDP client for Exchange.

 

[rcneff]

Thanks for the reply gyuzik. I am going to look into getting the TSM for copy services when we go to Exchange 2007.

After I got your post, I was able to find it on IBM's site. It said that the TSM for Copy Services is simply a license file that enables the functionality within the TDP for Exchange client to support VSS.

Thanks

 

[gyuzik]

Unfortunately we can't even use that yet... MS has an issue with mount points and VSS backups of exchange that has not been resolved yet. We are doing legacy backups at the moment with our Exchange 2007 and Windows 2008 64-bit environment.

 

[rcneff]

Interesting.

So you are saying that right now, you are doing legacy backups of Exchange with just the BA Client and the TDP for Exchange?

We are in the midst of cutting over to Server 2008 as well.

Do you know if legacy backups of Exchange 2007 will backup the passive node in a CCR Cluster or just the active node?

Thanks

 

[gyuzik]

Unfortunately I don't know the answer to those questions.

I know that copy services was required for the VSS backups, but I still have the copy services installed and performing legacy... I have not tried to uninstall copy services to see if legacy will still work.

As for the passive node, we back up the active one so again I don't have that answer.

Sorry.

 

[rcneff]

No problem. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my questions.

We want to ultimately see if we can get the passive node backing up when we get everything set up. The cool thing with CCR is that it essentially shoud provide a 24-hour backup window if the passive node can be backed up as opposed to the active node.

I will post back later when we get further along the path of getting Exchange 2007 running with anything that I find out related to TSM.

Thanks

 

[n9hmg]

I was told by a vendor (my old boss) 2 days ago that you can back up from the standby copy in a LCR arrangement, so I can't see a way for that not to work with CCR.
We don't have copy services either, so no VSS. I've found VSS to be nothing but the thing that makes so many backups fail, so I'm not crying about that - just hoping I can get my backups done in time once the windudes migrate everybody over to the EXC2008/Win2008 servers.

 

[rcneff]

Thanks for the reply n9hmg.

So you are able to backup just with the baclient and tdp for Exchange. No TSM for CopyServices?

I agree about VSS. I have had a lot of problems with that as well.

I just don't know of a way to tell the baclient not to use it. This may be a stupid question, but how do you tell the TSM BAClient not to use VSS?

I know that it is an option to use something different than VSS for the open file support, I just have never tried it. But, I have backup problems related to VSS even on servers where I am not using the Open File Suport. I have to routinely restart the TSM scheduler and the Volume Shadow copy service to get things working and ten the problem just comes back.

I actually posted that issue on a different thread and I have just today applied a hotfix that someone said may fix the problem.

Thanks

 

[FlashDragon]

Gyuzik,

I'm having trouble restoring a legacy backup on Exchange 2007 running on Windows 2008. The procedure I use is this:

1. Take a system backup of the Exchange server.
2. Restore it to a similar machine on separate network - works perfectly.
3. With cloned DC on that network, connect TSM server and restore the Mailbox Database.edb file with TDP for Mail on the Exchange 2007 server.

At this point, I've copied the log files manually and have run eseutil /mh to find the required log files to replay - I've got the ones listed but I can't run "eseutil /cc" because there's no restore.env file. TDP doesn't seem to generate one - have I missed some options somewhere?

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Gordon.

 

[FlashDragon]

Update - I checked the TSM settings a bit more - found that there *is* a restore.env file. TSM also restores the necessary logs to bring the DB back to a consistent state and I was able to run eseutil /cc successfully. One heads-up though - when replaying, it will replay all the logs it can find in the Exchange database log path, not just the ones to make the DB consistent. Might be helpful if you only want to do it all one step at a time.

G.

 

[Bluesland]

Where did you find the restore.env file?

 

[FlashDragon]

Restore.env file

Hi Bluesland,

Sorry - I just checked our server and there's no restore.env file on it at the moment. Or at least I can't find it. We've had big problems with it over the last couple of weeks though so that may have had something to do with it. I would recommend running the restore of the Exchange database and log files but without letting TSM do the recovery of Exchange automatically. When it's finished, search the server for the restore.env file and you should be able to find it.

Good luck!

G.