Exchange and DC Backup Stategy for Specific RTO and RPO

[CoffeeCup]

Hello,

I start implementing the backup of business critical services (like Domain Controller with office data and Exchange) and I'm looking for your opinion if backup strategy below works
and nothing is missed.
The initial setup is below:
- VM hosting DC with office data (~1.5 TB)
- VM hosting CAS/Hub/Transport roles for Exchange
- VM hosting Exchange mailboxes and logs (~1TB)
- Veeam 8 B&R Standard
- Windows server as Backup repository with Backup Exec (performing some other backups - the plan is to get rid of it eventually) with Quantum Superloader 3 attached
- OpenFiler as Backup Repository

The backup objectives that should be reached is 1 hour RPO, 24 hours RTO, archiving according to GFS schema (to tape for now and eventually it will go to DR site)

Eventually all the backup will go to DT site but for now I have somehow organize the offsite copies of the backup and I don't have any other choices other than tapes.

For DC and Exchange I'm planning to use the Reverse incremental backup every hour with full monthly backup. The job will be application aware but without logs processing (for now).
I'm not sure how many restore points is required - didn't get clear answer on this from my management - so I would like to keep 24 restore points. For archiving I guess
I should use File to tape job to dump vbk file to tape.

- Do you think this strategy will work for the RPO and RTO I have to meet? Is anything missed?
- Is there more efficient way from the performance point of view to implement this?
- For archiving would you recommend to use Veeam File to tape or Backup exec job? It looks for me like Backup exec job will give me more control on the process
but from another side Backup exec will not have any information about Veeam jobs and it might start backing up the files while it's in use. My concern that it will lead to non-consistent backup
- Would you recommend to use the same backup strategy for Cas/Hub server or I don't have to back it up every hour and daily will be enough?

Thank you very much for your help, I really appreciate it. I don't have a lot of experience with Veeam and would like to be sure that backup is setup properly.

Thank you

[foggy]

Hello, your strategy looks good for the given requirements, however, a couple of comments below.

For DC and Exchange I'm planning to use the Reverse incremental backup every hour with full monthly backup.

This is going to be a pretty long chain, even if you're going to limit the backups to working hours (8*30 restore points between fulls). I recommend at least weekly fulls.

- For archiving would you recommend to use Veeam File to tape or Backup exec job? It looks for me like Backup exec job will give me more control on the process
but from another side Backup exec will not have any information about Veeam jobs and it might start backing up the files while it's in use. My concern that it will lead to non-consistent backup

I'd recommend using backup to tape jobs for better visibility into the original backups.

[CoffeeCup]

I would like to use Backup to Tape but we have the Standard license and the only available option is File to Tape.

Yes, switching to weekly full backup makes sense.

Thank you very much!