What backup software to use?

[NetworkGeezer]

Originally Posted by Roberto

NTBackup is without a doubt the most foolproof tool for backing up Exchange. I've been working with Exchange since Exchange 4.0, and I've never found a better way of doing it. Lots of ways that people think are better sure. They usually tell me all about them for conversation when I'm doing a consulting job on the side recovering their exchange server from improperly configured backups.

How do you individual mail box recovery or do you just scoop up messages from the journal.

[meastaugh1]

I also had a little difficulty in installing a Quantum Superloader 3 (SDLT 600) as it seemed to pick up the Windows drivers. I downloaded the latest driver pack from Symantec (and may have initiated a driver update from device manager).

Originally Posted by NetworkGeezer

How do you individual mail box recovery or do you just scoop up messages from the journal.

Most exchange/backup forums seem to suggest that brick-level (mailbox) backups are too resource intensive and not necessary with Exch 03. I believe you can just use the Recovery Storage Group

[john]

I have a HP LTO1 Drive, with an autoloader that costs peanuts a year (yup, thats me!), I use NT backup with that, but I prefer Symantec Backupexec. Just started using 10d at home, and whats the difference between 10d and 9? Appart from USB tape drive support in 10d, they look identical, oh yeah appart from the Symantec badges. Anyway, drivers can be a nightmare, so let symantec sort the drivers out otherwise you will have problems, also may be worth going into safe mode and removing all the variants of your tape drive from device manager and removable storage as it may be getting muddled up with another copy of itself.

[ajbritton]

Originally Posted by NetworkGeezer

How do you individual mail box recovery or do you just scoop up messages from the journal.

Isn't that what the M: drive is for?

I believe the other way is to restore to an off-line server and retrieve the mailbox that way.

[sidewinder]

Right, firstly, I dont use anything except the Veritas drivers, Ive always been told not to so I dont. Its their drivers that are giving me a problem, which is what worries me

Anyway Ive taken some screenshots just to show everyone exactly whats happening: Am I doing it wrong??



This is the driver beforehend, when all drivers have been uninstalled. For some reason I cant get it to appear as an unknown device




Starting the add device wizard




It finds the drive




Clicking the details button before the driver install




Installing the driver




Yet after the install - still nothing!




The details button after the driver install




The driver details after the install (this is the driver installed with the latest driver update pack, if I dont apply that pack, it uses a driver dated 2002!)

Sorry about the big pictures!

[DMcCoy]

My version of that file shows as 5.1.1.1. Have you tried downloading the latest version of backup exec?

[sidewinder]

In response to the above, as I was only using a trial, I couldnt find a way to download a newer version

Anyway, Ive started to think the problem may be with the SCSI card or the drive itself (unlikely)

Ive had to stop using the server I was testing with as after uninstalling BE 10, it started blue screening.
So Ive connected the the drive back to my main backup server which has 9.1 installed, but Im just trying to get the drive working with NT Backup for now.

Ive uninstalled all Veritas drivers, theres nothing left. Ive installed the latest drivers from the Quantum site, and its recognised in device manager fine.

However, NTBackup doesnt recognise it, and in removable storage it is there, but still has a red cross over it. When I try to view any properties I get 'The object identifier does not represent a valid object'
This happened on the other server too (with the same SCSI card) so its not just that PC

Then, I went into event viewer and noticed every time the server is restarted there are about 5 errors, which are a mixture of these 2 messages:



and



So do these indicate a problem with the card itself?

[john]

I would think that is indicating something with the card for sure, have you got a spare car you could try it with?

[sidewinder]

Unfortunatly no

All the main servers have external SCSI connectors, but they will require a different cable, guess I might have to invest in one to check

[sidewinder]

A bit of success at last!

I bought a VHDCI cable so I could connect the drive to another SCSI card
Got one out of an old server, got further, NTBackup recognised it, but still gave errors about the controller

So as a last resort I plugged it into my ISA server (far from ideal I know) and tried NTBackup and it actually worked! Backing up something as I type!

So I'll leave it like that for now but at least this gives me a case to put forward for a PROPER backup server, rather than one of the old desktop machines with a cheap SCSI card

Decided not to bother using Backup Exec for tape backups now anyway, just going to do the disk backups with that and use NTBackup to move those files to tape...much simpler

Thanks for everyones help

[DMcCoy]

The lto3 drive is terminated isn't it?

[Grommit]

Does NT Baxckuo do open files and SQL backups ?

[mrforgetful]

To restore anything mailbox related in Exchange using ntbackup you need to restore the entire Mailbox store, but this doesn't take long to be honest.
Also, if you have Enterprise Exchange (I don't), then obviously you keep all your Staff and year groups in different storage groups for this reason among many.

On a more personal note, we use Retrospect 7.5 and I think it's crap. It takes an age to do any restore compared to when I used Veritas.

How much are those Superloaders? Are they any use if you need to take the tapes home?
Basically our backup is on it's own server, Retrospect does incremental through the night to Hard Disk, then we Recycle it over to tape throught the day to take home for fire safety reasons.
The trouble is now it's too big for a 400Gb tape, and I don't really want to use two for each day.
How can I get a backup each day to take home without spending half my day swapping tapes etc...?

[wesleyw]

The incremental is 400gb? I wouldn't have though there would have been that many changes between backups?

Wes

[mrforgetful]

The Proactive is incremental, but the Disk to tape copies everything each time so I only need one tape.
I didn't set it up to be honest, outside support contract 'futureproof solution' that's hardly even a year old and cost...a lot I understand.