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Exhcnage 5.5 Backup Best Practises

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by mart h

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I am running exchange server 5.5 on NT4 using veritas Backup exec and the exchange agents.

I have inherited the setup with the agents set to backup the information store only.

I was thinking about turning on the Mailbox agent as well, but I am unsure of the ramifications of backup times and the benefits of the restore process should I do so.

Is it better to keep the existing setup or go to backing up the mailboxes as well and what benefits will I gain from this?

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by timwalsh

Although I don't use Veritas, I'm assuming the Mailbox Agent allows you to back up individual mailboxes in addition to the Information Store (this is also known as a brick-level backup) (other Enterprise-level backup programs have similar capabilities).

Will this increase your backup times? Probably, although by how much may be difficult to determine beforehand.

Benefits: If your Information Store gets corrupted, you obviously have to conduct a full restore. However, if a single user accidently deletes a mailbox or critical emails, with only the Information Store backed-up, you would have to restore the entire Information Store to recover. With individual Mailboxes backed-up, you need only restore that one individual's mailbox - thus not affecting any other users.

Unless your users are saving email to individual .pst files (vs. their Exchange mailbox), I would recommend going with the individaul mailbox backup as well.

Hope this helps.

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