Exchange server VM - snapshots not being removed

[TommyB]

Hi,

I'm using VEEAM for roughly 8 months now to backup 6 virtual machines including an Exchange 2010 machine and suddenly I have problems that snapshots are not removed after the backup.

Probably this is related to changing my backup scheme from chained backups to backup-all-VMs-at-the-same-time-and-let-veeam-do-the-job?

So I opened a support case with VMWare and guess what - the VMWare support engineer told me that it is a not-so-good idea to use snapshotting to backup a running Exchange or SQL Server.

I will now set up the Exchange job to run at a different time as all the other jobs - so if this is load related this might fix the problem?

Any opinions on that?

Thomas

[foggy]

So I opened a support case with VMWare and guess what - the VMWare support engineer told me that it is a not-so-good idea to use snapshotting to backup a running Exchange or SQL Server.

Most likely he was referring to the fact that snapshot based Exchange backup is not supported by Microsoft. However, as long as you use an Exchange-aware VSS-based application that guarantees the required application consistency, you're ok.

I will now set up the Exchange job to run at a different time as all the other jobs - so if this is load related this might fix the problem?

I would recommend to also contact our technical support for closer investigation of the leftover snapshot reasons.

[TommyB]

Just as an update - after moving the Exchange Job away from the other VMs, the left over snapshots vanished and everything seems to be back to normal.

I will keep an eye on this.