Veeam & Backup Exec 2010 on Exchange 2010 DAG

[regi]

Hi

I have Win 2008 R2 Exchange 2010 VM (Primary) & Win 2008 R2 Exchange 2010 physical server in a database availability group (DAG) setup
Using Veeam for backing up the VM for the last 2 months without any problem. Just wanted to know Veeam will co-exist with Backup Exec 2010

Say Veeam backup by 9pm then BE 2010 by 2am daily

Thanks in advance

Cheers

Regi

[Gostev]

Regi, Veeam VSS may fail if you have BE agent installed on the backed up VM. This has been reported before (for previous BackupExec versions). This is the only possible issue I see.

Why are you backing up the same VM twice?

Thanks!

[regi]

Thanks Gos

Can I backup Ex 2010 DAG with Veeam as the same way BE 2010 backup? ie as the DAG group so it truncates the log files on both servers etc...?
Then I don't have to use BE 2010

[Gostev]

Regi, we will definitely truncate the logs on Exchange server we are backing up. Then I assume Exchange will do the same on the second server in the DAG automatically (I am not very familiar with Exchange 2010 yet though). Thanks!

[Bunce]

We're about roll out a DAG as well so will provide feedback once tested.

I don't think the second will automatically truncate when backing up the first though. it would need to be done manually.

Andrew

[regi]

Hi

Just to let you know
It automatically truncates logfiles on the primary VM but not on the physical DAG member - Bunce was correct

Cheers Guys

[joergr]

backup both or all dag members. but for heavens sake in the same backup job. you will be surprised what veeam dedup technology can do for you. i was surprised.

[regi]

Hi Joergr

My DAG is one VM + one physical server - How can i backup the physical server with Veeam?
(Of course no problem backing upthe VM) This is not a problem with Backup Exec 2010 because it backs up the DAG group & flush logs on all servers

Also VBR & BE 2010 seems to be happy on the same Ex 2010 server

[pmoy]

Hello,

Can Veeam restore mailboxes or email after the backup of Exchange 2010 (Server 2008 64-bit R2)?

[Gostev]

Hello, the upcoming v5 release will be able to.

[SamDLC]

Nice, can't wait to get away from BE 2010.
When do you expect to release v5 of veeam?

[Vitaliy S.]

We are aiming at late Q3.

[joergr]

@regi: thats an easy one, p2v your physical e2010 server - but fun aside, i didn´t knew you were using a physical one as second/third dag member.
we don´t use any physical ones at all anymore. but just for interest: if you want to be on 101% (and i guess you want that because you are using be12.x inside the vm in parallel with veeam br) why don´t you use just windows server backup inside the vm instead of be12.x? it comes free of charge and won´t use non-microsoft vss drivers.

best regards,
Joerg

[pmoy]

Hello, the upcoming v5 release will be able to.

Thanks for the response. This is great news! We are actually in a 30-day trial of Veeam and should probably note, that as of Monday this week we had spotty backups at best running framework backups of our VMware environment (75+ VM's) with Backup Exec 2010. Last Tuesday it actually crashed Exchange 2010 and we were down for the entire day on email. With Veeam, this week we are now at 100% on backups.

[Gostev]

I am glad that Veeam is working well for you! Thank you.

[regi]

Good news I have upgraded to vSphere 4.1 + VBR 4.1.2 & It flush logs on all servers inc the physical DAG member
No need for BackupExec 2010 unless you are a fan

Well done Veeam team - Keep up the good work

Can't wait till V5

[vmmatty]

I'm trying to understand how this is supposed to work. I believe I saw in another post that the Veeam VSS writer will truncate Exchange logs, but it does so at the beginning of the job and not at the end. That isn't the ideal scenario but not the end of the world either. Does it do anything similar for SQL?

I've got a two node Exchange 2010 DAG with boot volumes on VMFS but the data volumes are on iSCSI attached LUNs (which Veeam can't backup). We're using Backup Exec 2010 for backing up at the Exchange level and that will truncate logs as well.

So it sounds like I should be disabling VSS for my DAG nodes and just getting a crash consistent backup since I know that Backup Exec will be backing up my Exchange data. Is this the general recommendation if another backup product designed to work with Exchange is in use?

Thanks.

Matt

[McClane]

It does it at the beginning of the job, because in the guest os point of view backup is done after snapshot creation, I guess.

[Gostev]

McClane, that's right, but again we have resolved this in v5.

Matt, you are correct for v4. In v5, will have an option to use VSS, but NOT truncate logs, which you will be able to set granularly (per-VM). This option is specifically designed for the use cases when you are backing up your Exchange with more than one tool. So you will be able to backup VM disks with Veeam, and Exchange data on RDM disks with BackupExec.

We do not truncate logs for SQL in v4, but we will have this option in v5.

Thanks!