There has been a lot of buzz created about Exchange Server 2010’s new database capabilities.  The terms “RAID-less” and “backup-less” get mentioned in conversations but are often taken out of context, or used with incorrect assumptions.

But why are people so excited about Exchange Server 2010 and talking about throwing out RAID and backups?  There are three main reasons for this.

Three Big Exchange Server 2010 Improvements

Improved Database Performance – the Exchange database schema has been overhauled to deliver much greater efficiency and therefore much better performance in terms of disk I/O.  This overhaul stirred some controversy because it put an end to single instance storage, however the small loss of SIS delivers much greater benefits in performance.

Improved High Availability – Exchange Server 2007 had four different HA/DR options, each one with its own complexities and limitations, and each one administered in a different way.  Exchange Server 2010 simplifies this to one single, vastly more effective high availability model called Database Availability Groups.  This basically involves replicating a database between as many as 16 servers (DAG members) that can seamlessly fail over if any individual server experiences a fault.

Improved Data Retention – In Exchange Server 2010 mailboxes and databases can be much bigger than previous versions, archiving has been built in, and longer retention is feasible making recovery of single items and mailboxes possible over longer periods without having to access backups.

These improvements have led to the idea that an organization can deploy multiple Exchange servers in a DAG using cheaper, slower storage sub-systems, without RAID to replicate the data, and without backing up because emails can be recovered almost indefinitely.

Which is true, but only if Exchange Server 2010 is deployed correctly with enough resources to make this possible. Continue reading Data Protection for Exchange Server 2010

One of the least exciting yet most important parts of an Exchange administrator’s job is making sure that the Exchange Server environment is properly backed up.  Throughout my career I’ve spent many long nights with customers who have suffered a failure of an Exchange server and discovered that their backups are unreliable or even non-existent.  In this series I will discuss Exchange Server 2007 backup and recovery and demonstrate some actual disaster recovery scenarios that I have encountered on the job.

What to Back Up on Exchange Server 2007

To understand what to back up in an Exchange Server 2007 environment you must first consider the server roles that you have deployed.  In the most basic Exchange Server 2007 deployment the Client Access, Hub Transport, and Mailbox server roles are installed.  In more complex environments more than one of each of those roles might be deployed, the Mailbox server might also be clustered for high availability, and other roles such as Edge Transport and Unified Messaging might also be in use.

In addition to the Exchange server roles there are also considerations such as the Active Directory (a pre-requisite of any Exchange environment), client data such as PST files or POP3 mailboxes, and any server-based anti-spam system that is deployed.

All Exchange Servers

Generally speaking all Exchange servers in an organisation should have their local file systems and System State data backed up.  However because Exchange Server 2007 stores much of its configuration in Active Directory you can recover some server roles without needing to have backed up any data at all.

Continue reading Exchange Server 2007 Backup and Recovery Part 1 – What Needs to be Backed Up?