Exchange Backups

[withanh]

Tom,
I got a different hot fix re: VSS & Exchange from Veeam that I was going to apply first. I wanted to clone the Exchange box and apply the hotfixes on the clone first to make sure it doesn't blow anything up before I do it on the production box. But I can't clone because of the error. Grr! Looks like I'm gonna have to apply the hotfixes to the production box and cross my fingers hoping it will work.

The KB that Veeam support suggested I install is http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929774. I'm not sure if I saw your VSS rollup patch or not, but I have been googling it and saw there's a few patches related to VSS.

[tsightler]

929774 is an older VSS hotfix (Rollup 3 I think). This was superseded by 940252, which was then superseded again by the one I posted (940349). I think that 940349 is the latest VSS patch, but it's hard to keep up with, there could be even newer ones.

[withanh]

Good to know, thanks Tom!

I'll install the 940349 tonight.

d

[withanh]

Wo0t!

The hotfix cleared up the vssadmin error for the Exchange writer, and the logs are cleared! Thanks Tom & and Anton for the help and suggestions!

Code: Select all

Writer name: 'Microsoft Exchange Writer'
   Writer Id: {76fe1ac4-15f7-4bcd-987e-8e1acb462fb7}
   Writer Instance Id: {b86bd33f-6d56-402a-bbed-59362d1c3151}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Strange the snapshot release is still taking forever, last nights release started at 2:21:12am and finished at 6:23:12am. Just over 4 hours...Oh well, at least the backup job is done before the business day starts!

h

[tsightler]

Strange the snapshot release is still taking forever, last nights release started at 2:21:12am and finished at 6:23:12am. Just over 4 hours...Oh well, at least the backup job is done before the business day starts!

Glad to know you got it working. One possibility on your snapshots, do you have your Exchange maintenance scheduled to run at the default time (I think nightly from 1-5AM). If so, that extra load might be working against the snapshot consolidation.

[withanh]

That's probably it. It is set for the default time. I'll have to look at changing that maintenance, I've not done that before, but I'm sure it's just a reg hack away

I also noticed that the daily backups are about 50% the size of the original "full" backup. Is that the case for you as well?

Code: Select all

 Volume in drive Z is Data Drive
 Volume Serial Number is E25B-6D7B

 Directory of Z:\Veeam\Exchange

09/03/2009  01:55 PM    <DIR>          .
09/03/2009  01:55 PM    <DIR>          ..
09/03/2009  01:55 PM                 0 dir.txt
09/03/2009  06:23 AM    85,257,224,398 Exchange Backup.vbk
09/02/2009  06:13 AM    51,124,330,221 Exchange Backup2009-08-31T200026.vrb
09/03/2009  06:23 AM    47,117,181,076 Exchange Backup2009-09-01T200142.vrb
               4 File(s) 183,498,735,695 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  2,703,827,402,752 bytes free

[withanh]

Was even easier than reg hacks! How long does this maintenance usually take? Is it the full 4 hours? What happens if I trim that down? My backups start at 7pm and run til 4:30am, there's not really a good window available to do the maintenance that doesn't run into my production day. Plus, we've got folks across the country so really as far as the mail server is concerned, the business day starts at 5am because I'm on the left coast and the users in Ohio are already at work by the time I'm rolling out of the sack.

Hope you don't mind me picking your brain

[tsightler]

You should see notes in the event log when the maintenance starts and finishes. If the log shows that it's completing before the end of the maintenance window then it takes less than 4 hours, if it shows ending pretty much exactly when the window ends, then it's probably not finishing (it's supposed to pick up where it left of on the next maintenance). My system does not finish in the four hours.

You might consider simply moving the window to a time while the backup is running. I know this doesn't make much sense, but I suspect that the maintenance is causing more problem with the consolidation of the snapshots rather than impacting the backups performance. Consolidating snapshots can take a long time if the system has significant write load, by moving your maintenance earlier it wont be running when the snapshot consolidation starts.

I actually only run maintenance on the weekends. We're a 24x7 manufacturer, and have users all over the world, however, the weekends are noticeably quieter, so I run maintenance from 6AM to 6PM on Sat and Sun, I figure that's only four hours less that running it 4 hours a night every day. I'm not sure if this is a good practice, but it's worked for us for 10 years with no major issues.

[withanh]

No, that makes sense. If I move the maintenance back to say 9pm to 1am, Exchange doesn't start trying to remove the snapshot until 2 or so, that way they'd not interfere with each other, right?

And I do see that the maintenance says it stops when the window ends and the event says that it will pick up where it left off.

[Gostev]

I would not set Exchange maintenance for the time when snapshot is open on a virtual machine. If you do this, snapshot will become huge and it will take hours to commit to VMDK file (when snaphot is deleted after backup).

[withanh]

OK, well, that explains my previous post where my daily backups are 50% of the first full backup. I'll change the maintenance window to Sunday only when no backups are running.

d