Backup Exchange 2013 DBs to different repositories?

[uni-wh]

Hi all,

I'm going to use the native Exchange 2013 archiving with archive mailboxes residing in separate Mail-DBs on separate disks, so I will have a server with production and archive databases, which should be saved by Veeam (v9) to different repositories. I'm unsure about how to do this properly.

Of course, I can define two jobs, one for backup of all disks apart from the archive database disks (to repository A) and another which will backup only the archive database disks (to repository B), but what about application awareness in this setup?
Up to now I used to backup the Exchange server with the "Process transaction logs with this job (recommended)" option, and I would like to keep it this way. If Veeam has to backup only the servers disks with the archive databases - without the system drive on which the Exchange binaries are installed -, will it truncate the logs of only the archive databases automatically? Or will it fail to detect that it has to save an Exchange servers disk at all? (And will it truncate only the logs of the production databases when running the other job?)

Thank you!

Regards
Christoph

[PTide]

Hi,

If Veeam has to backup only the servers disks with the archive databases - without the system drive on which the Exchange binaries are installed -, will it truncate the logs of only the archive databases automatically?

No, it will archive all logs, but archive databases won't be present in the backup.

And will it truncate only the logs of the production databases when running the other job?)

It will truncate all logs, but production databases won't be present in the backup.

I think that you can exclude certain databases from processing with the following dirty trick:

Use pre-freeze script that dismounts the database before snapshot and use post-thaw scripts that remounts the database after the snapshot is taken.

The workaround hasn't been fully tested so please be careful.

Thanks