Brick level backup

[mdwyer20175]

I hired MSoft to help me fix a corruption problem. Long story, but this latest email from them might be of some interest to others here, and led me to two questions...

 

Is this why competitor BExec no longer does brick level backup? They sell a very pricey alternative product I think. Also, is the 2007 Exchange version of Retrospect still using brick level backups via MAPI?

 

Chime in if you have an opinion on my questions or the following comments, please. I am not going to list sender here, no point in getting sender in trouble for no reason, but this is quoted from a tech support email

 

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Microsoft does not recommend brick level backup. This is because brick level backup does not run on the normal backup API provided by Microsoft. Instead, it uses MAPI, just like the Outlook client does. Using MAPI will cause backup performance down-grade and may cause memory leak problem.

 

If you indeed has the requirement to perform brick level backup, I suggest you consider the following practices:

 

1. Do not run brick level backup on every mailbox. Only run brick level backup on important mailboxes, such as the mailboxes for executives.

 

2. Set mailbox size restriction, especially for those whose mailboxes need brick level backup. Keeping smaller sized mailbox will lower the possibility of getting corrupted. And running brick level backup on large mailbox will extend the backup procedure significantly.

 

3. Disable store level scan with the registry change as I’ve mentioned above.

 

4. If you have found a certain mailbox has some corrupted items, as reported in the brick level backup log, I suggest you try to move this mailbox to another store or another server. Move mailbox operation will fix some corruption if the problem is not severe. (NOTE FROM MATT DWYER - THIS DOESN'T WORK FOR BRICK LEVEL CORRUPTION!!)

 

5. Please keep it in mind that if the brick level backup log shows there are some corrupted items in certain mailboxes, and there is a failure, it does not always mean the backup fails. Usually, the overall backup is still successful. Only the backup on items/mailboxes reported are not successfully. You can try a restore test to verify if the backup is successful.

 

For brick level backup, the corruption is often caused by antivirus application scanning the Exchange database. I recommend you disable store level scan by editing the following registry:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS\VirusScan

 

If the registry does exist, please click Enabled on the right pane. On Edit menu, click Modify. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, type "0" (without the quotation marks) in the "Value data" box, and then click OK. Restart Information Store service. With this change, we can disable the store level scan.

 

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Not sure this helps anyone, but maybe this explains why MS wants me to install a recovery server, restore to that server and then move a mailbox back to original server (ouch, I have lots of extra servers lying around and time to do this...).

[Mayoff]

Retrospect does use MAPI sessions for the mailbox level backups. The Storage Groups are copied using MS API's

 

Thanks for sharing your experience. The antivirus tip is a good one.