Ntbackup does save more information. It takes an entire backup of the storage group and its structure (including things like the public folder store). It will allow you to restore them directly to the information store as-is (or even to a recovery storage group). Now you'll probably ask, well, why not use ntbackup to do incremental backups of Exchange too? And the answer is, it doesn't do that, unfortunately. In all actuality, you'd probably want a more robust backup solution for things as critical as Exchange, that will do per-message restore, blah blah, but chances are if you're on this list, as I am, you probably don't have that kind of budget.
-Tony -- Anthony J. Biacco Senior Systems/Network Administrator Decentrix Inc. 303-899-4000 x303 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rob Owens Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 9:05 AM Cc: backuppc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] backup up an Exchange server Thanks very much for the info. I'm not sure I understand, though, what is the purpose of using ntbackup if you are also using Exmerge? Does ntbackup save some information that Exmerge does not? -Rob Anthony J Biacco wrote: > Well, you can't back up the exchange content databases with the > databases online (i.e. with the Information Store service running) > You can do it 3 (and probably more) ways with BackupPC: > > 1. Stop the Information Store service, then have BackupPC backup the > databases, which is basically all the files in the C:\Program > Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA directory. Note, this is the default > directory..but most people put it on a different drive. Then restart the > Information Store service. This method is not recommended. > > 2. Use ntbackup on your Exchange server to do a backup of the Exchange > storage groups. Ntbackup will use VSS to backup the databases to a .bak > file you specify with the information store able to remain online. Use > BackupPC to backup the .bak file > > 3. Use Exmerge to export all your mailboxes to PST files. Have BackupPC > backup the .pst files. > > Personally, I do a combination of #2 and #3. I use ntbackup to do a full > database backup every Saturday. I use Exmerge to do incremental backups > of all mailboxes every night (except Saturday). With Exmerge you can > even just take changed data from the mailboxes, so you're not backing up > every single byte of every single mailbox, but you are keeping a running > up-to-date mailbox with the PST file (unless you delete the PST files > every night). And then if someone needs something recovered from the > week, you can just open their exmerge-backed up PST file in Outlook and > pull it out rather than go through restoring the database files, > creating a storage recovery group, copying the data over, blah blah. > > -Tony > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
