asked on

exchange 2010 backup policy...

I appreciate this is very much organisation specific, but out of interest;

1) how often do you do full backups of your mailbox databases..

2) how often do you do incremental backups of your mailbox database(s)..

3) how often do you do full backups of your public folder database(s)..

4) how often do you do incremetial backups of your public folder database(s)..

are there any best practices on such a policy, i.e. full and incremental, and/or differential..

Stelian Stan

I would follow Best Practice:
- http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO74428
- http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Best_practices_to_reduce_exchange_backup_windows

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EEhotline

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Simon Butler (Sembee)

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Pau Lo

ASKER

Are HA and backups like for like though. My understanding was they are essentially replicated clones, so if for example an admin managed to delete the wrong mailbox, that would then be replicated across all mailboxes in the DAG, hence the need for a backup to restore from...

Simon Butler (Sembee)

If an admin deletes the wrong mailbox then you can recover that from Exchange. Similarly you can turn up deleted item retention so that users can recover deleted content.

Microsoft run their Exchange platform with no backups at all.

Simon.

Pau Lo

ASKER

going slightly off topic but are there shell commands to determine the retention policies per mailbox, i.e. how long users can recover deleted emails for, and how long admins can recover deleted mailboxes for?

Simon Butler (Sembee)

It isn't set per mailbox usually - it is set on the database.
I don't think I have even looked to see if it could be set per mailbox.

Simon.

Pau Lo

ASKER

i know this one is now closed but why do you not use incremental backups?

Simon Butler (Sembee)

Waste of time in my opinion.
When it comes to recovery, I want a one shot restore.

Simon.

Pau Lo

ASKER

sorry to ask again, but would you just give a bit more detail on why its a waste of time, in management freindly/exchange newbie terms!

Simon Butler (Sembee)

I thought I had.
If I want to recover something, I want a single tape, backup file etc to recover. I don't want to recover bits from here there and everywhere.
Full backup only, so I have everything I need. I cannot even think of a scenario where an incremental would be useful with Exchange.

Simon.