Clarity around Exchange 2013 and Synthetic Fulls

[svetecs]

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out the best configuration to satisfy my requirements to backup our Exch2013 environment. I have 2 Nodes in a DAG on a Hyper-V Dell/Nutanix cluster. I have a Dell Data Domain as a target. I require (or would like):

• A weekly Synthetic Full

• A monthly Active Full (this could maybe not be required if Synthetic Fulls are reliable)

• Nightly Incremental

• Log Truncation

• No downtime during backups

So far, I have the following configured:
Incremental enabled, with weekly Synthetics.
Active Full monthly
AAP with 'Require successful processing' and 'Process Transaction logs'

However, it has also been recommended elsewhere to enable quiescence https://helpcenter.veeam.com/archive/ba ... hoice.html

But what I find confusing is that according to the quiescence KB, it notes that it will not truncate the logs (which is what I want).

So therefore, with my requirements in mind, what are the correct settings/config to achieve my desired outcome?

Thanks in advance.

[Regnor]

The backup mode itself doesn't make a difference for log truncation; each run will process/truncate logs as long as application aware processing is enabled (and successfull).

The Hyper-V guest quiescence is just a fallback mechanism, so if AAP is disabled or failing, it will be used.

Synthetic Fulls are proven to be reliable since years (over a decade) and we use them as a default for all our customers. Restore tests or SureBackup are recommended regardless of the backup type because errors can always occur. In general a storage error will affect all your backups and not just one single file. And especially on a Deduplication Appliance it won't matter as all your backups share the same blocks.

Regarding the DataDomain you should look for best practice guides on how to setup everything. And do some performance tests to see if you can accomplish your RTO.

[svetecs]

So using quiescence is just a safe guard in the event AAP has failed? Simply having AAP and Synthetic Fulls (without quiescence) would be enough to satisfy my requirements?

[Regnor]

Its meant for VMs which don't support AAP/VSS; for example Linux Systems.
So yes it should be enough to make consistent backups if Exchange.

[foggy]

Hi, Stan, Max is spot on on the quiescense settings. I also encourage you to review this thread for the Exchange DAG backup best practices (disregard '2010' in the title, it still contains some valid general considerations).

[svetecs]

Its meant for VMs which don't support AAP/VSS; for example Linux Systems.
So yes it should be enough to make consistent backups if Exchange.

That's what I figured. Some other advice elsewhere suggested enabling quiescence but I thought that it didn't apply because my backup is VSS and AAP supported.