Morning All,

I have been using both methods on a couple of sites and honestly both has it's 
pros and cons.

With the NTBackup way unnecessary space is used when the exchange.bkf is 
created and when you have to restore it takes longer because now you have to 
restore it from Bacula then use NTBACKUP to restore the .bkf file which, if 
your exchange goes down or the DB corrupts and you have the BOSSES on your 
back, tends to take too long. However with using NTBACKUP your exchange logs 
are cleared - that is if you do not believe in circular logging!

With Using VSS there is no unnecessary disk space usage for the backup because 
as Bruno pointed out that a snapshot is taken of the Exchange Server and that 
is backed up and with a restore it's a breeze. The cons are that the log files 
are not cleared but I use circular logging and its works - TRIED AND TESTED

For Individual Mailbox backup you have to use EXMERGE which will export the 
mailboxes to pst and merge it after the backup is complete. This is quite a 
nice tool especially when the user deletes mail or corrupts his mailbox. In 
this case you do not have to restore the entire Exchange DB just the user's pst.

A couple of months ago I read about a project for a Exchange File Daemon, I 
can't find the link but I'll post it as soon as I find it again. 

With regards,
Janco van der Merwe

Computer Kit Systems
Tel Direct: 011 695 5316
Switchboard: 011 695 5300
e-mail: janco_va AT cks.co DOT za

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruno Friedmann [mailto:bruno AT ioda-net DOT ch] 
Sent: 19 June 2008 22:27
Cc: baculausers
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] NTBackup Batch script to backup Exchange

Hi Keith

For what I've read, you can rely on the VSS snapshot (no individual mailbox 
backup, but don't seem to be your way)
After that for a restore, we have to restore the exchange into "Restore Mag" if 
the server is a new install.
Otherwise ( for the moment I don't know ) I don't understand if there or not a 
real trouble.
After while VSS is what it's use on all windows part if it can restore a 
registry why not a serveur.
For sure not as stable as a postfix/qmail restore would be.

In the next three week on one of my customers, I can try the backup restore of 
their Exchange as we would have the new
hardware ready. So I would give it a try a give you some fresh informations.


Keith Sudbury wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
> I am going to backup MS Exchange server 2003 using NTBackup and get the 
> client to run this batch file before running the actual backup of the 
> windows server.
> 
> The batch file I have looks like this :
> 
> C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@C:\Documents and 
> Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows 
> NT\NTBackup\data\Exchange.bks" /n "Exchange.bkf created 6/19/2008 at 
> 8:08 AM" /d "Set created 6/19/2008 at 8:08 AM" /v:yes /r:no /rs:no 
> /hc:off /m normal /j "Exchange" /l:s /f "C:\Backup\Exchange.bkf"
> 
> Does this look correct? Basically I want to just do a full backup of 
> exchange each day and over write the file in C:\Backup\Exchange.bkf 
> which the bacula-fd will pick up and write to the tape.
> 
> Once I have this working correctly I think I will make an entry on the 
> wiki page? Alot of people are posting "how do i backup exchange" this 
> seem the most reliable way I have found so far...
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers
> 


-- 

     Bruno Friedmann

Ioda-Net Sàrl   - www.ioda-net.ch
  2830 Vellerat - Switzerland




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