Question

Can I snapshot exchange 2003 enterprise?

Asked by: dfschneider6673

Can i safely snapshot exchange 2003 enterprise in vmware? exchange 2003 is running on a windows 2003 box.

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Asked On
2009-11-07 at 04:40:53ID24880326
Topic

VMware

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-11-07 at 04:44:51ID: 25766071

Stop exchange services prior doing the snapshot otherwise edb might not be consistent

 

by: MikeHolcombPosted on 2009-11-07 at 04:52:45ID: 25766112

While backup Best Practices still dictate you use a Backup program like Symantec BackupExec to backup Exchange and its information stores, you can use snapshots of your Exchange server as backups.

I would strongly suggest creating a script to stop your Exchange services and ensure they are stopped before performing your backup to ensure your Information Stores do not become corrupt.

For example, you can use the following to stop your Exchange services:

net stop "Microsoft Exchange POP3" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange IMAP4" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Information Store" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange System Attendant" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Routing Engine" /y
net stop "Microsoft Exchange Management" /y

Hope these help...

Mike

 

by: OvePosted on 2009-11-07 at 04:56:36ID: 25766130

read: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996125(EXCHG.65).aspx
VSS snapshots will enable you to backup the ONLINE DB, when shutting down the DB in production-environments is not accaptable.
when vss-snapshot is done you may safely do a vmware-snapshot and be able to recover to a working state when reverting to the vmware-snapshot with exchange-db being corrupt.

 

by: dfschneider6673Posted on 2009-11-07 at 05:05:03ID: 25766159

what is a VSS snapshot? so you are saying i can do it without shutting down exchange services?

 

by: OvePosted on 2009-11-07 at 05:15:22ID: 25766198

 

by: paulsolovPosted on 2009-11-07 at 19:04:44ID: 25769261

Do not use VMware snapshots for backups if that is your intent, they are not meant to be snapshots such as VSS snapshots.  VMware snapshots are designed for a point in time rollback of a VM, think of it as a differential.  If the base (the original VMDK) file goes down then you don't have a backup or an original.

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