Exchange DAG Backup

[jnap]

Hello!

Today we have a 4 win2012 physical exchange 2016 servers equally splitted over 2 datacenters.
We also use DAG technology and exchange databases can be active on any of the 4 servers. They are all copied in all servers.

The main question is: how can i correcly backup this exchange farm?
first i have to use windows veeam agent.
Then, do i have to use 1 job for the 4 agents? 1 job per agent? 1 job per datacenter? Can i backup only 1 server?
And finally, wich "guest processing" options do i have to use?

I am today using veeam 9.5 u4 and planning to go on veeam 10 in 2 months.

And what if we want to add more physical servers into the exchange farm?


Thanks for your help

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Jnap.
That's a tricky case, and here are general recommendations for Exchange DAG backup with Veeam Agent.
To answer your questions:
- 1 job, add entire cluster by its name
- backing up a single node with agent is not recommended, as Veeam will be unaware of DAG and backup consistency will be of question(there will be none, as a fact)
- more nodes will not be of problem, as Veeam will automatically detect DAG nodes on scheduled rescan intervals and add them to the backup job scope
- caveat here is that you will have 1 backup target for both sites, and all DBs will be processed(active and passive copies)
- as a workaround, you can have 1 full-passive DBs node per site and back those up separately, as standalone servers, with per site backup job and per site backup repository
/Cheers!

[jnap]

Ok thanks for this answer!

My cluster does not have a name We are in an "IPless" configuration here
I have read this on the veeam kb https://www.veeam.com/kb2463 :

"For an IP Less DAG (a DAG without an Administrative Access Point), the backup job configuration procedure is similar to the same procedure for standalone servers. To process an IP Less DAG, you must create a Veeam Agent backup job for servers in the Veeam backup console and add all nodes of the IP Less DAG (the steps below show it in detail) to this job.
(..)
During the backup process, Veeam Backup & Replication detects that servers in the backup job are part of a DAG, and creates a transactionally consistent backup of Microsoft Exchange databases running on these servers (only passive database copies are processed, active ones are excluded from VSS freeze operations; however, the job still copies all the correspondent EDB-files of all databases from all the nodes)."

Today, we don't have à dedicated node for passive only and if we had a node for this we may have ReadIOPs problem on the active servers (which are with SATA internal disks)

So i will test the IPless DAG Method and will see and if that's good
And then i will post here the results

thanks again!

[tgm]

Hey there,

we have a similar setup - Veeam VBR Version: 9.5U4 and a 4 node DAG MS exchange 2019 over two datacenters.
as database view: node1 and node3 is a pair and node2 and node4
node3 and node4 are the one with the passive DBs always

backup is running BUT the problem is the restore - Veeam Explorer for Exchange is starting and we can see the store but if you try to open/collaps the store the error happens:
JetError-543 or JetError-1216

I have tried the setup as veeam kb kb2463 and the following:
*) backup only node3 and node4 as server with type "entire computer" and VSS with log truncate - backup is running BUT the problem is the restore: JetError-543
*) backup only the active nodes (node1 and node2) as server with type "entire computer" and VSS with log truncate - backup is running BUT the problem is the restore: JetError-1216
*) backup only one pair (in the v-stage i have one store per node pair) node1 and node3 as server with type "entire computer" and VSS with log truncate - backup is running BUT the problem is the restore: JetError-1216 if i want to restore from the node1 and JetError-543 if i want to restore node3
*) backup all nodes as server with type "entire computer" and VSS with log truncate - backup is running BUT the problem is the restore: JetError-543 and JetError-1216 depends on restore of active or passive node
*) backup all nodes via the DAG object with type "entire computer" and VSS with log truncate - backup is running BUT the problem is the restore: JetError-543 and JetError-1216 depends on restore of active or passive node

One thing what we have found was that the VSS was not working correctly because of a permission problem - but the veeam backup alwasy says VSS OK and backup ok.
We fixed this via "DComPermEx.exe -da set "NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE" permit level:l" but the problems descriped above are still the same

So the question is - what's wrong?
And how can i add the exchange DB to the Veeam Explorer for exchange if i start the explorer manual (not via right click on the backup)

@jnap : is your restore working?

Update: Case #04198959 was created.

[tgm]

Update: the restore problem is "singel item restore"

[jnap]

Hello,
We also have 2 pairs of DAG in 2 DCs.
Today we backup the first pair only, with one job per server.
We do not have problem with mailbox restore but the 2nd pair is not backuped ... and DB can be active in each of the 4 servers.
That's why i want to improve it and try the ipless dag method with 1 job.

[tgm]

After a lot of trying we have found out that if you have enabled the metacache database MCDB on MS Exchange 2019 that you can't restore a databaes from a backup. And we have found a new MS artikle to that 31.05.2020: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchan ... cdb-enable
So you have to use the option /i by the eseutil restore ... /i = ignore missing database attachements

So we think Veeam Explorer doesn't handle this case of exchange2019 .. we will see what the support find out.
But if using the /i option we are able to bring the backuped database to an clean state.

[jnap]

Hello there
New idea...
i need to have my 4 exchange servers through 2 DCs into the same backup job without using WAN links => to be DAG aware with veeam
What if i create a SOBR with both 1 storage repo in DC1 and 1 storage repo in DC2 and i use it only for my exchange backup job..
Will veeam use the "good" storage for each exchange server, to backup for example exchange server 1 into DC1 storage and exchange server 2 into DC 2 storage ?

[adam900331]

Hy!

How can I backup 2 node physical Exchange server in DAG? How can I configure the backup job? Are there any best practise?

Thanks.

[RomanK]

Hello adam900331,

Have you checked this KB Is that you are looking for?

I'll merge your post with existing topic which may provide a few additional tips.

Thanks

[adam900331]

Thanks, it helped me.