Exchange 2010 passive DB

[jojodawg]

Greetings,

I need advise on setting up Veeam to backup our new Exchange 2010 databases, preferably the passive databases.
What we have are 2 Ex 2010 at the main datacenter and 1 Ex 2010 at our DR datacenter. All three servers are VM's in VSphere 4.1. All three servers are in a DAG with their databases in circular logging mode.

We have 1 Veeam VM server at main datacenter and 1 Veeam vm server at the DR site.

What I would like to do is backup the passive databases at the DR site and store them on disk there since that is where our regular backup tapes are stored. This would be our point in time database for the "just in case" corruption issues.

What is the best way of going about backing up the passive databases? If possible..
Databases/logs are on a separate drive. Do I exclude the system drive?
Do I disable circular logging? Which server or all of them?
Straight fulls the best way for the back ups? Or forever Incremental.

I just want to be able to pull the databases off the backups and replace any corrupt database and not having any issues with mounting or replaying logs if needed.

Sorry for the billion questions, just need to figure the best way to do this.

BTW VEEAM has been great so far, we are currently replicating a couple of our critical apps out to DR and was a snap to put in place.

Thank you for your time.

Bill

[jojodawg]

Does my request seem confusing?

I just want to make sure I'm doing it right?

[Alexey D.]

Hello Bill,

Sorry, I cannot give you any specific advice on how to backup passive databases as I know little about them.
To be safer, I would not exclude the system drive (as normally it doesn't occupy much space like databases do).
Backing up VM as a whole gives you the flexibility to perform Instant Recovery and start that VM at any moment.

Also, to keep the consistency of your backups do not forget to have Application-Aware Image Processing enabled.

Choosing a backup mode depends on your requirements to performance and storage. These links would be helpful for you to choose:
Reversed Incremental or Synthetic Full
[FAQ] v5 : Frequently Asked Questions > Answers (refer to the excel file attached).

[lewisdrummond]

I have two Exchange 2010 SP1 Mailbox servers in a DAG, and both hosting active/passive databases. I am only backing up the first mailbox server, and when all its databases were active, Veeam 5 backups worked fine. However, with some of the servers' databases being passive, backups now fail. Some suggestions say disabling the Exchange Replica vSS writer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 76851.aspx). Any ideas?