> > 1. Bacula *really* needs some way to backup Exchange in a way that if the > user/admin wants, he can restore a single mail box. If you are working on > such a feature, it would be *very* interesting to us. >
FWIW, Microsoft strongly discourage so-called 'brick level' (individual email) backups of the Exchange database - they are really slow, and frequently error prone. My experience with Backup Exec confirms this - on a system with a 70GB mailstore, the database backup takes about 30 minutes, and the 'brick level' backup takes about 6 hours, and frequently complains about 'corrupt mailbox items' (eg something with a strange Unicode character in it not understood by the current configuration). And for proper recovery purposes, you need to do both types of backups so you are doubling the amount of data you are backing up (actually worse because the 'brick level' backup suffers from a certain amount of bloat) The way to handle single email or single mailbox level recovery that is recommended by Microsoft is: . Implement deleted item/deleted mailbox retention policies - that will catch most cases of a user deleting an item and means you don't even need to go near your backups. . In the event that the item has really been purged from the database, restore the database into the 'Recovery Storage Group', and copy it from there (I have confirmed that the restore part works with my Exchange Agent). All of that being said, everyone says 'brick level' backups are a bad idea, but everyone implements them... The main drawback of a full database backup is that to restore it you have to have enough space to restore the backup into, and obviously you are restoring a whole lot more data than you strictly want to, but with the retention policies it should be a rare event to have to go back to backups just to get a single mailbox or single item. It's mainly for when your entire database goes south - and if you are logging properly you can restore right up to the point before it broke. James ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-devel
