Ask any Exchange Administrator what is the most difficult challenge they face managing Exchange Server and they will tell you protecting Exchange data. The current standard for protecting Exchange data is a once-a-day backup (full or incremental). This exposes up to a full day of lost email if a server fails or becomes corrupt. In today’s business environment, where email is used for all types of business transactions including correspondence with customers, losing up to a full day’s worth of email is unacceptable. Microsoft has announced that the next major release of Exchange will include new a feature called “log shipping” that will deliver improved data protection for Exchange.

Log shipping is a process of backing up database and transaction log files on a production Exchange Server and then restoring them on a standby server. Log shipping is a form of continuous backup because it automatically copies transaction logs throughout the day and automatically restores them on the standby server. In the event an Exchange server fails, the standby database files are ready for recovery, and contain the most recent transaction data from the last log file shipped. This is a major improvement over the previous standard of the once-a-day backup. 

In addition to improving Exchange data protection, log shipping has several other important benefits. Log shipping does not require expensive hardware or software. Your choice for standby server need not be similar in capacity to your production server and you can use the standby server for other tasks, helping to justify the standby server cost. Implementing log shipping is not difficult and once it is up and running, very little maintenance is required. Depending on how you design your log shipping, should you need to failover, very little, if any data is lost. Compared to third-party disaster recovery products that attempt to protect Exchange data with byte-level changes, log shipping is relatively inexpensive and easy to maintain.