Veritas Backup - Information store + mailboxes or just store?

[multiband8303]

Having a debate....

Server is SBS - Storage on the tape...not the issue.

Should I backup both the store AND the mailboxes or just the store?

I have heard horror stories of trying to recover from the store, or am I being too redundant?

 

[cross6]

Well here's the deal.

Store backup = FAST. Can recover from bare metal. HOWEVER, you cannot do granular restoration i.e. restore one email to an inbox. (Just setup deleted item retention and let the end users recover their own mail via outlook).

Mailbox backup = SLOW. Fails often, screws up log files, etc etc etc. It's the same as every user logging in and downloading all of their email at the same time, it KILLS the server and database. However, you can do email leverl restoration. BE WARNED. You CANNOT do bare metal recover if the whole store gets trashed.

I just backup the store. Only takes an hour for a 16 gig store. I use deleted item and deleted mailbox rentention policies as a safety net for deleted emails and mailboxes. Then we trained our end users how to use the "recover deleted items function" in Outlook. Not only did it cut down our backup times and quality, but it saves us help desk time as well.

 

[RebateMonger]

I don't use Veritas, and don't have the "email level" restoration capability. As cross6 notes, "recover deleted items" takes care of most of the email-level issues. It CAN take a while to restore a mailbox using the Exchange Recovery Store, since you have to restore the entire Store, but it's worked fine the two times I've done it on a production server.

 

[cross6]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
I don't use Veritas, and don't have the "email level" restoration capability. As cross6 notes, "recover deleted items" takes care of most of the email-level issues. It CAN take a while to restore a mailbox using the Exchange Recovery Store, since you have to restore the entire Store, but it's worked fine the two times I've done it on a production server.

Yes I should have noted that you can restore a mailbox by restoring the entire store. However I use the "deleted mailbox retention" policy so I don't have to roll back everyone's mailboxes.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: cross6
Yes I should have noted that you can restore a mailbox by restoring the entire store. However I use the "deleted mailbox retention" policy so I don't have to roll back everyone's mailboxes.

Well, you don't actually have to restore everybody's mailboxes. You can restore a single mailbox from a mounted Recovery Store. But you have to bring back the entire Store, which can take a while. THEN you write the single recovered mailbox you need on top of the mailbox you are restoring.

 

[cross6]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: cross6
Yes I should have noted that you can restore a mailbox by restoring the entire store. However I use the "deleted mailbox retention" policy so I don't have to roll back everyone's mailboxes.

Well, you don't actually have to restore everybody's mailboxes. You can restore a single mailbox from a mounted Recovery Store. But you have to bring back the entire Store, which can take a while. THEN you write the single recovered mailbox you need on top of the mailbox you are restoring.

That's not a lot of fun with Veritas, to put it lightly...haha.

 

[Tsaico]

I have Veritas to a oracle RAC, and it works fine, but overall, I do not like how Veritas piecemeals everything. It is so granualar that you could easily buy things you don't need and miss buying things you do.

As for mailbox, I use GFI's suite of products and it works reasonably well. I can do both mailbox by mailbox or the entire store. We have done both on production and they worked as expected. (though GFI's anti-spam is starting to lose ground, as I am getting slowly more and more spam into my user's mailboxes.)

I have anther site that I useRebatemonger's approach and just use what was built into Exchange/Windows. I found that information from petri's web site.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Tsaico
I have anther site that I useRebatemonger's approach and just use what was built into Exchange/Windows. I found that information from petri's web site.

Yeah. Almost all of my Servers are SBS 2003, which take good advantage of the built-in NTBackup program with automated scripting and reporting features. It works pretty well for my clients, with the sole exception of those with 150GB+ backups. For those, it's kinda' slow (NTBackup is limited to 8 MegaByte/second transfers because of its design (16-bit transfers)).

As I mentioned, I've restored a few mailboxes and some entire Stores both in practice and in "real-life", and NTBackups restoration of Exchange has worked as advertised.

 

[azev]

The one thing I like to watch is database size when restoring... I cannot remember if veritas information store or mailbox restore will cause you to loose the single instance features on the restored IS.