Deleted Mailboxes and Giant Sized Backups

[ZippySLC]

Hi all,

 

I'm having two problems with my Exchange backups.

 

1. If I delete a users mailbox, and purge it from Exchange (to the point where it does not show up in the First Storage Group anymore) Retrospect still tries to back up the mailbox. For some reason the client still sees the mailbox as being there. Am I right in assuming that deleted mailboxes should disappear from the client as well? New mailboxes show up without me having to do anything.

 

2. I do a nightly backup of everyone's mailboxes as well as the Exchange Server (ie: "Exchange Server" and "Exchange Mailboxes") show up in my client sources for my script. Retrospect claims that it's doing a differential backup, but each night the "Exchange Server" backs up about 16gb worth of data. User mailboxes seem to back up only differential changes.

 

Is my Exchange backup strategy correct? Should I do a nightly backup of the Exchange Server? Is there any way to cut down on the 16gb that I need to backup nightly? What about my public folders - I don't even see them getting backed up.

 

Any advice/suggestions welcome. Thanks!

[AmyJ]

Hi -

 

1. On a client machine Retrospect will continue to see the mailboxes if there are references to it in Retrospect (part of a script, or even - I believe - part of a backup set). You should be able to "Forget" the purged mailboxes for clients in Configure > Volumes.

 

2. There as an issue recently where the log was "reporting" that it was backing up the full database, even though it was really only backing up the changed data. It was the reporting that was wrong, not the functionality. Take a look in the Windows Event Log for information corresponding to the Exchange Backups. The log will show you the type of backups being performed by the Exchange API's along with any error information. Are there any errors in Retrospect?

 

3. Do your public folders show up in Configure > Volumes? Do you have them listed as sources in your script?

 

-Amy

[ZippySLC]

Hi Amy,

 

I ended up making a new backup set and script since it started complaining about how it couldn't groom my backup set for the last two days. So now it has the current mailboxes.

 

I am fairly confident that it is backing up a full backup of the First Information Store, since it backed up about 16GB worth of data, which is approximately the size of my Exchange Server's information store. It's been doing that forever, so now I have an 800GB folder full of Exchange backups!

 

I'm now seeing "All Public Folders" now under my mailboxes. I haven't looked to see if I can drill down any further.

[AmyJ]

Take a look in the Windows Event Log for information corresponding to the Exchange Backups to see if there are any errors or other relevant information about the backup. What kind of backups are noted?

[stig]

Zippy,

 

I am no expert on restrospect but I know in your exchange server, if you have set circular loggin enabled, which is by default, windows' build-in backup utility wont be able to do accumulative backup. i believe Retrospect is facing the same problem. so you have to disable it circular loggin.

 

see the thread for more info. wish it helps.

 

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.exchange.admin/tree/browse_frm/thread/8366335634bea815/ef9767ac4301e47a?rnum=1&hl=en&q=exchange+backup+incremental&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fmicrosoft.public.exchange.admin%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F8366335634bea815%2Fef9767ac4301e47a%3Ftvc%3D1%26q%3Dexchange+backup+incremental%26hl%3Den%26#doc_ef9767ac4301e47a

[nekr0phage]

Hi Zippy,

 

While Retrospect will now automatically add newly created mailboxes, it will not forget the old ones until they no longer appear in any backup. You can manually remove them from your script as Amy suggested.

 

If you have been doing differential backups for a long time, then Retrospect failing to groom should be expected. Retrospect will not be able to groom snapshots that contain differential Exchange or SQL data, these are considered "intermediate" snapshots and are required for proper Exchange/SQL restores. Schedule in a Full backup of Exchange and then you should be able to groom the previous full and incremental snapshots.

 

Even though Public Folders are listed as a child of the Exchange Mailboxes Container, they will not be resolved and backed up with mailboxes. These must be highlighted as a seperate source on your script. This is an annoyance at best.