Backing up an Exchange cluster

[stevehughes]

I'm looking for opinions on the best way to backup an Exchange cluster running on vsphere.

Currently we are using VM backup for these, and apart from the need to ensure we backup the VMs separately and without job overlap, it works OK.

Our exchange cluster currently comprises 2 Exchange 2016 VMs and a fileshare witness VM. We are considering that perhaps a shared disk witness might be more robust than a fileshare witness, but in order to backup a VM with a shared disk we would need to use the agent.

What limitations does the use of an agent put on our ability to use the various restore and recovery scenarios?

Is there a 'best practice' method that Veeam (or users) have found to work best for an Exchange cluster?

[Mildur]

Are you talking about CSV (Cluster Shared Volumes) with „shared disk“? Are this supported for a Exchange DAG Configuration? I have only heard about the possibility to use a cifs Share for the witness file.

Veeam cannot backup a CSV:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

Backup of CSV (Cluster Shared Volumes) is not supported. Cluster disks used as CSV are automatically excluded from backup.

If you are using Veeam Agent to Backup a DAG, then Veeam will backup on DAG Server at a time. Veeam Agent is aware of clustered Exchange and SQL configuration.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

The Exhange VSS Writer cannot create a VSS snapshot of all databases at once. That is why Veeam Agent backs up DAG servers one by one.

[HannesK]

Hello,
I would leave it as it is. Everything works fine as far as I understand.

Depending how many details on best practices you like, I recommend the following links
https://www.veeam.com/kb1744
https://andyandthevms.com/exchange-dag- ... plication/

Shared disks are possible with the Veeam Agent for Windows, as long as they are not CSVs (as Mildur described).

The application restore via explorer works same with agents. Full VM / machine restore is the main difference (main difference that comes into my mind is no CBT restore for agents).

Best regards,
Hannes

[Andreas Neufert]

My understanding is that shared disks as witness are not possible anymore with Exchange DAG. You have always the Witness on another server outside of the database servers.
However you can protect the witness server with a Failover Cluster but Microsofts documentation says that no additional High Availability is needed on the witness server itself.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchan ... erver-2019