NT server and exchange server back up

In order to perform reliable back-up (so you can be sure that you can restore from the back-up), I suggest you back-up all subdirectories in c:\winnt\system32 (not the files under c:\winnt\system32). But if the server crashes, there is no guaranteethat you will recover with only this information. You will hoewer have to reinstall NT anyway.
If you have roaming user profiles, back these up as well.
For Exchange, you need to back-up the databases (ISPUB, ISPRIV and DIRECTORY), as well as the transaction logs. Alternativelly, you can use a utility named Exmerge (is availaible if you ring MS support or I can e-mail-it to you). With a bit of scripting (there are some articles about this subject here at TechRepublic) you can back-up all you mailboxes to .PST files.
You will aslo need to use some utilities from the Back Office resource kit to back-up information about your Directory in Exchange.
To be honest, I think this is not such a good idea. Buy a DAT drive and use native ntbackup (it has Exchange support), it will do. We've been using this for 4 years and managed to recover from several crashes.
If you want more details, let me know.
Regards,
Radu

I mostly agree with Radu's answer but wanted to emphasize two points.

First, you will have to do an off-line backup of the Exchange databases (meaning you will have to stop those services while you do the backup). It is easy enough to write a batch file that uses netsvc.exe to stop the services, copy the dir.edb, priv.edb and pub.edb files, and then use netsvc.exe to re-start the services but e-mail service is unavailable during the backup procedure. This is workable in many situations andyou can recover from a crash with this procedure, but you may lose the data between the last backup and the crash.

The other point I wanted to make is that your plan may be "penny-wise, pound foolish". I recently purchased a DAT tape drive (refurbished) with a SCSI controller card for less than $250. When used with the Exchange-aware version of NTBackup that comes free with Exchange, it has proven to be a bullet-proof mechanism for backup and recovery. The primary advantage is that it permits on-line backups (no interruption of service!) and provides disaster recovery with no data loss as long as the transaction logs are intact and circular logging is disabled.

If funding is tight, you might ask each of your 50 clients if they would chip in $5 each to protect their e-mail. My guess is they would do so willingly.

paul

Both of the previous answers give you the majority of what you need. Something to mention though is that when you are backing up Exchange you also want to back you the dsadata and dxadata directories in the exchsrvr directory these contain your logsand check files for the logs. I would like to stress as the other two have that using a DAT backup will be a much safer route it is also much easier to recover from a crash with a tape back up.

This question was auto closed due to inactivity