Thanks very much for all your help, to everyone that chipped in on this one. Its been a real eye opener about how things aren't really working, when they appear to be, and keeping your eye on something you assume has been taken care of by throwing money at it!! Cheers again, im going to re-think this strategy, do some testing, see if I can get a full working backup/restore solution in a test environment, then put my proposals forward to the powers that be. So you may hear more from me for a few pointers to add into my proposal ;)
----Original Message----- From: Robert Moir [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Mon 02/06/2003 18:50 To: Exchange Discussions Cc: Subject: RE: Backing up the M Drive -----Original Message----- From: Neil Doody [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Mon 02/06/2003 18:17 To: Exchange Discussions Cc: Subject: RE: Backing up the M Drive > Ahh right, so brick level backups albeit by Veritas or Arcserve is a bad > idea anyway? Shame we have spent so much on Arcserve already, I wont > recommend exchange agents and Veritas Backup then! I don't use exchange agents myself. The thing to ask yourself is what _exactly_ is the problem with the current backup scenario. Is it the software - in which case would new software improve it? Or is it the method (e.g. I would count doing brick level backups as a faulty method myself) and therefore whatever software you use to discharge this backup method, you'll still have problems. > So item retention is the way to go then. Let me think, this will allow > me to restore files for a duration I set when setting up this retention > (I assume?). That will have deleted files covered, the next scenario > would be that the server crashes, I will only be wanting to do a full > restore in this case. The next point I would make is forget about 'files' unless we're referring to disaster recovery of your information store itself because exchange server is a database system. I'm not merely trying to argue semantics here, I honestly believe a lot of stuff becomes clearer when you start thinking about these things in the "correct" way. You set retention on two things - the whole mailbox (which covers your point below within the retention point you set for the mailbox) and also on items within the mailbox such as individual mail messages, calendar entries, contacts (Which covers you for users who ring up and say "I just deleted a very important message and then emptied my recycle bin, can you get it back for me?" which is a good thing when its the CEO). > Okay, one last scenario, we have a leaver and we delete there mailbox > from the server, then someone says "oh can you get it back". I guess > the best policy for this is to put leavers on a 5 day standby. I would suggest the mailbox retention for this. Also, if you consider it important to archive a particular mailbox then you could consider using exmerge to extract that mailbox into a PST file which you can then burn to CD and archive for as long as you need it. > I think that pretty much covers all events, and could be a better and > cheaper alternative. Also a reason for them to give me more hard disk > space in my servers ;) Spend less money and get a better backup? Its entirely possible with a copy of the free NTBackup and a long careful read of the "disaster recovery" whitepapers on the microsoft website. Oh. And please stay off the M Drive. It's called M as that is short for "Mangle" which is what tends to happen to your exchange system if you play with this drive. You know how sometimes people get a good idea and it looks really good on paper and doesn't cause anyone's house to burn down during the beta so they try it out on one version of a product, and discover problems, and its either gone or well hidden in the next version? Hope that helps Rob Moir, MS MVP _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
