Microsoft Exchange <AIR>

[Gostev]

OK, may be some new stuff/system in our support org, I don't really follow that closely. Just never saw this before.

[digitlman]

[merged into existing discussion]

Heya guys,

I'm at the end of my rope with Symantec. We're having an intermittent, persistent, show-stopping backup bug for our Exchange server that Symantec appears not to want to fix (going on 4 months now)

We're already using Veeam for vm-level backups. I see that the Veeam Exchange AIR is in Beta 3. At what point (or approx how long) until Exchange AIR is considered ready for use in the production corp environment? We have an Exchange 2003 VM, and we want to do GRT-type backups.

Thanks!

(I will be gettign with my CDW sales rep, but I wanted to talk to the source first!)

[digitlman]

My question mas merged into this thread. Ok. So does that answer my questions?

[Vitaliy S.]

No, it doesn't, I've merged your post to keep everything in one topic.

With Veeam you can already start performing GRT-type backups. The RTM code for Exchange wizard should be available a little later, I do not want to disclose any dates yet, just not to set false expectation.

[digitlman]

What about issues with vm's being delayed when removing snapshots at the end of the backup? I often see with our Blackberry server vm, that there can be a slight pause or delay when Veeam is removing the snapshot at the end, and the BEX server sometimes spams the error log that it cannot reach the exchange server. I am afraid that if a backup is being made of our exchange server with the AIR, that if the vm pauses, the Outlook clients will display "lost connection to the exchange server". Of course, the backups will be done at night when nobody will be using Outlook, but I still worry about this.

[tsightler]

AIR doesn't have anything to do with the actual backups so it's a little confusing to ask about this issue in the context of AIR. AIR allows you to leverage an existing Veeam backup to restore individual items, but the backup process doesn't change with AIR.

As far as the issue your describing, the "pause" doesn't really have anything to do with Veeam, it's a matter of fact that removing snapshots from VMware ESX will have some impact on the underlying VM. The only thing you can do is make sure that you minimize it's impact by having enough IOPS, and server resources to remove the snapshot as quickly as possible. We've been running Veeam years and as long as our cycle is at night, we really haven't had an issue, although we've experienced some serious performance impact if the job somehow makes it into the busy day.

Also, you might want to coach users as much as possible that the "Outlook is retrieving data..." message from Outlook is expected to happen sometime, even Microsoft says so in KB article 892764:

You receive this message as part of the standard interoperation of Outlook and Exchange. Even on the fastest network that has the best hardware and architecture, some remote procedure calls will take more than five seconds to obtain a response. This is a simple fact, and the appropriate expectations should be set with users. If the message appears only occasionally, no extensive troubleshooting is required. Trying to troubleshoot when the message appears only occasionally is not likely to be productive.

[digitlman]

Ahh ok. Well, once we purchase our Ent lic, I'll play around in a test environment and see what happens.

[Vitaliy S.]

Microsoft Exchange AIR Wizard has been released. The RTM version is available for download from our website. Thank you all for your patience and help validating the beta code.

[lewisdrummond]

I have Exchange AIR 5.0.2.235 and a Exchange 2010 SP1 CU3 environment, with separate servers for CA/HT and MB roles. I additionally have all of my mailbox servers in a DAG.

With Veeam, I backup one of the mailbox servers (as every server has a database copy). When testing Exchange AIR, I specify the production CAS server, and specify the backed-up VM for the mailbox. In the AIR wizard, I get to the mailbox screen then an error comes up: "Unable to access mailbox: Unable to connect to the remote server". How can I tell where it is trying to connect, and am I doing anything wrong?

[Vitaliy S.]

Lewis, it would be better if you could reach our support team and let them have a look at the log files.

[simeonh]

I can't find any documentation on how to do a Microsoft Exchange AIR Restore of a mailbox, the user guide only has Active Directory Restores and Universal Restores documented. Can you please post a link with the documentation of how to use the Microsoft Exchange AIR Wizard and the SQL AIR Wizard.

Cheers,

[Alexey D.]

Hello Simeon,

Please open this page: http://www.veeam.com/go/vPower-webinar/. You will find the list of recorded vPower seminars and the title "Running Exchange on Vmware" among them. Starting from 25th min there is a demo on how to restore a single e-mail. Hope it helps!