Microsoft Exchange Servers And Backups – Part I

While backing up your data seems to be a main focus in almost every technical book, and manual, many forget or neglect to actually do backups.  This is an unsafe practice as it can result in the loss of your data.  Let’s talk about Microsoft Exchange server and backups.

 Having backups for your Exchange Server can ultimately save you from a terrible catastrophe.  Imagine having your company loose all contacts and address books from the past 3 weeks – no imagine loosing them from the past 3 months.  Either situation is undesirable, and can be prevented by having good backups of your Exchange Server.

 Microsoft Exchange Server’s backups are considered to be either online or offline, so we will take a look at each in more detail.  This article will discuss online backups, and Part 2 will discuss offline backups.

 Online Backups

 Many of you will recognize the backup options for online backups.  These include normal, copy, incremental, and differential.  How long it takes to back up your Exchange Server relies heavily on which option you have chosen, and how often you perform backups.  Table 1.2 explains the different types of backups and their advantages and disadvantages:

 Table 1.2 Backup Types and Their Advantages

 While the best solution restoration wise would be to complete a Normal backup everyday.  This however would take up a lot of your time and energy as well as storage space.  For this reason, many technicians prefer to use a combination of the back up methods. 

 By combining Normal and differential backups you are able to keep server overload to a minimum as well as to provide you with logs to help with the restoration.  In order to restore, you would need both your Norma and your differential back up media and you would have to have circular logging turned off.

 By combining Normal and Incremental backups you are able to backup your system in a shorter period of time, and doesn’t put much pressure on your server.  Of course with this method you would need to perform at least two restores and circular logging would need to be turned off.

 Please join me in Part II of this article to learn more about Offline Backups and your Microsoft Exchange Server.

 By:  Tracey J. Rosenblath