This topic should generate some interest <g> The cited analysis is interesting, but out of date (V3.7.2). Also, the methodology is suspect, especially considering a Veritas engineer was onsite to set up NBU but they set up TSM from the manuals.
There is a readable and comprehensive article on Exchange 5.5 deleted object restore at http://www.exchangeadmin.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=7922&Key=Outlook%20Deleted%20Items As I understand it, the admin enables the "deleted items cache" and deleted emails live there awhile, easily restorable by the user. If this facility isn't enabled or doesn't work, the Microsoft supported approach for getting deleted mail back is to restore the entire Exchange server on another box. Not good. Veritas and some others use a messaging interface to capture emails and back them up. This interface was never intended for backup, and is very slow for both backup and restore. But it does work, and the vendors do keep up with Microsoft breakage. At the last IBM storage conference, this came up, and the recommended approach was to use IBM Content Manager CommonStore for Exchange Server. If anybody has done this perhaps you could post results. _____________________________ William Mansfield Senior Consultant Solution Technology, Inc "Malbrough, Demetrius" To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <DMalbrough@TT cc: IINC.COM> Subject: Re: TDP for exchange vs Veritas hot backups Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] IST.EDU> 12/21/2001 02:15 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" Also, Gerald! This may be off the topic but there was a nice analysis done on TSM vs. Veritas! You can view it at: http://www.keylabs.com/results/veritas/veritas.html Regards, Demetrius Malbrough UNIX/TSM Administrator -----Original Message----- From: Gerald Wichmann [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 1:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: TDP for exchange vs Veritas hot backups I find this is the hardest thing to sell among potential customers who are considering both platforms (TSM vs Veritas). The reason tends to be that Veritas's hotbackup solution will do a higher level of granularity in restores - something companies in our experience definetly prefer. Being able to restore a mailbox seems to weigh heavily in favor of Veritas - or at least that's been my experience. Now I know some of the arguments against it. E.g. it's not officially supported my Microsoft and therefore if Microsoft makes a change to the backup API or to Exchange, it could break their hot backups altogether. This argument I find is of limited use because most companies who've been using it have never experienced this problem and can easily argue right back that Veritas will quickly patch the product such that it does work. One of the arguments regarding mailbox restores is also to use Microsoft's deleted retention parameter so that the exchange server holds onto deleted messages for a period of time before officially purging them. That way they are recoverable without having to do a restore of the server. My understanding of this feature though is to do a mailbox recovery, it is still very painful and involves another exchange server? I would love it if someone more knowledgable could give me the low-down on how the deleted retention actually works when a mail or mailbox needs to be recovered once it was deleted. How do you go about recovering them? Another argument is the speed of backups and restores. My understanding is Veritas's hotback up much slower to do backups and restore. However I've never seen any numbers nor have I had the opportunity to test this myself. Exactly how big a difference is this? Does anyone have any real tests or numbers or is this also a fairly week argument? Thanks for the help!
