Backup Exchange DAG (Two nodes - Active-Active)

[ajped]

Good morning,
We have two virtual machines for the Exchange Server 2013 mail system. It has a configuration in DAG (It's a regular DAG) where each server has active and passive databases.

What is the best approach to backup this infrastructure?

I think I have to create two separate backup tasks for each node of the DAG and schedule the backup of each one at different times. Taking into account that each node has both active and passive databases, Would it be okay to schedule the backup of one node on even days and the other node on odd days or do you need to back up both nodes every day? I would like to have a backup everyday but I don't like the idea of wasting space backing both nodes everyday. It's possible recover a mailbox database, mailbox, mail item, etc. from the passive database copy?

In your opinion and for our infrastructure, Is it the best and recommended to back it up our Exchange DAG Infrastructure as virtual machines with the App aware option selected (with the two separated tasks) or back it up using the Windows Agent (https://www.veeam.com/kb2463)?. We have Veeam B&R 10.

Thank you.

[Egor Yakovlev]

If your exchange is virtualized, go with VM-level image-based backup - and yes you can backup only passive node in this case and have all recovery options mentioned above.
Check out this quick intro blog post and links at the bottom of it.
/Cheers!

[ajped]

Thank you Egor for your help.