Exchange 2010 DAG backup using 6.5

[slupton]

I am currently looking at a way to backup a Exchange 2010 Environment before we go live

Environment
2 x HUB/CAS
2 x MBX in DAG
All Exchange are VM's in a ESXi 5.1 Cluster
Veeam B&R 6.5 installed on Physical Box

I am wanting to do a backup of the DAG selecting databases on the passive DAG node. I opened Veeam Explorer for Exchange and selected the ese.dll from MBX02 (Passive DAG Node) then proceeded to select the DB1 EDB file that is live on MBX01 and recieved the error - The process cannot access the file <\\serverpathtoedb> because it is being used by another process.

This DB is definatley not active on the server selected.. am i doing something wrong here..

[foggy]

Stuart, could you please clarify what are you trying to achieve (as I might got it wrong)? Veeam Explorer for Exchange is a tool that allows for granular item recovery from Exchange database. If you need to perform a backup, you should create a backup job and add corresponding VMs in it.

[slupton]

Apologies for not being clear I want to be able to backup the exchange environment inc DAG and be able to restore either entire vm, Mail DB and logs or single mail items. I have backed up the servers selecting application aware backup but I can see how a restore of single files can be done without restoring the entire vm..

[foggy]

Ok, got it. So if you have a valid Exchange VM backup, then you can select the Backups node in Veeam B&R console, expand the job with the Exchange server, right-click the Exchange VM, and select Restore Exchange items. The backed up database will be automatically mounted and you will be able to perform item recovery.

[veremin]

There is a great blog post describing a lot of useful tricks for Exchange DAG backup; might be worth reviewing. Thanks.