IBM responded to me with some good info after reading my post. Here is their
suggestion...
Johnny,
In general, when planning for Bare Machine Recovery for any server, there are
3 data types must be considered: The operating system, the application and the
data repositories. For Windows hosts, the first 2 data types are usually
recovered as part of the BMR while the data repositories are recovered as a
post-BMR process once the operating system has booted and the application is up.
In most cases, the same is true of the backups. For example, in a TBMR
environment, you will probably have a TSM file-level backup running that
excludes the content of the Storage Group (EDBs, log and system directories).
Then you will use TSM for Mail - MS Exchange to protect the storage groups
themselves.
A BMR process in that scenario will be to recreate the OS (and possibly
application drives, if they are separate) from TBMR; boot the OS; resolve any
post-BMR issues like display or sound drivers; restore any additional
application files from TSM; Start Exchange; and then Restore the MSEX Storage
Groups.
Since you have TSM, I would first look at TBMR or CBMR.
FastBack BMR is usually only recommended if you are already running FastBack.
While there are some benefits outside of BMR to FastBack that may make one
consider adding it to their environment, usually there is not a lot of reason
to deploy it just to get BMR, since there are products that do BMR that work
with TSM directly.
BTW, FastBack BMR and TBMR are definitely not the same product, even under the
covers. They are very similar in many ways, but are definitely separate
products
>>> Josh Davis <xaminmo AT OMNITECH DOT NET> 2/1/2010 2:12 PM >>>
If TBMR is actually Fastback, that's interesting. Fastback is FilesX, a product
and company that IBM purchased April 21, 2008.
FilesX is a block level filesystem incremental backup product for MS Windows.
They can use VSS for 2003 OS and 2005 Exchange/SQL. For older Exchange/SQL it
will initiate a quiesce and will be filesystem aware and will manage the
backups properly.
Exchange individual mailbox restore is to mount up the backup over the network
as a drive. The Exchange agent can access the exchange DB on disk and can pull
out individual messages and save them to the running exchange server.
For normal files, you can just copy them out of the mounted drive (looks like
local, RW, NTFS but changes are lost on unmount).
Full restore is to overmount the filesystem with the fastback server copy. At
that point, it's similar to a mirror with one copy being the FB server and one
copy being the local disk. You can mount/start your apps as soon as you
initiate the restore. Any data overwritten will not be restored, and any data
requested will be restored first in queue. No dismount is requred at the end
of the restore.
Bare Metal Recovery uses a PEmode CD to boot and initiate the beginning
recovery.
Fastback DR is formally through replication to a DR hub via FTP. Repository
files are sequential access on disk.
To integrate this with TSM, you use TSM to back up the Fastback repository,
whether it's a local repository, or the repository of a DR hub. Fastback comes
with scripts to integrate with TSM and a couple of other vendors' enterprise
products.
With friendly regards,
Josh-Daniel S. Davis
________________________________
From: Johnny Lea <jlea AT DIS.UMSMED DOT EDU>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Sent: Wed, January 27, 2010 1:20:50 PM
Subject: [ADSM-L] BMR for Exchange server
I'm lost trying to come up with a bare metal restore product for our Exchange
servers.
Cristie's CBMR says it treats Exchange data as plain files with nothing to
handle the internal structure of Exchange.
Not sure about Cristie's TBMR. (my IBM re-seller tells me he talked to Cristie
and they told him that their TBMR is IBM Fastback BMR. That sounds strange.
Did IBM buy them?)
I haven't found anyone yet at IBM who can tell me how Fastback for Bare Metal
Restore works with Exchange.
Acronis...I know nothing about.
I'd love something that would work with my TSM environment.
Can anyone suggest anything?
Thanks.
Johnny
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