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Yannone
Asked: 2010-12-01 08:27:36 +0800 CST

Backing Up Exchange Server 2010 with Backup Exec 2010 on a 32 Bit Server

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I have recently purchased a shiny new (x64) server which is running Exchange 2010, replacing my old Exchange 2003 install.

The trick seems to be that Symantec's Backup Exec 2010, which is running on a 32 bit server, will not backup the Exchange databases. It wants to be on a 64 bit server to do this.

As I don't have a 64 bit server to move my backup systems to, is there some kind of in-between solution I could use?

windows-server-2008 backup exchange-2010 backupexec

4 Answers

  1. You can disable granular Exchange backup and backup the database through VSS. It won't give you the ability to restore mailboxes or messages individually but it will give you the ability to do a full database restore.

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  2. Windows Server Backup works wonderfully with the Exchange database if you want to do full backups, just make sure you have it set to "VSS Full Backup"

    Alternatively you can look into CrashPlan (not sure if it works with Exchange).

    Ideally, however, you want to have a live database mirror running on a separate system.

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  3. The only way I can see to do this is to use Windows Server Backup to backup the Exchange volumes to a disk, and then use Backup Exec to backup those WSB backup files. Going to be cumbersome though and prone to error if you get the timing wrong.

    Note, if you want to schedule a WSB backup to a remote file share you can't do it through the WSB GUI, instead you need to get familiar with wbadmin.exe and manually set it up as a Task Scheduler task.

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754015%28WS.10%29.aspx

    If you're using WSB to backup to a local disk on the Exchange server then you can do it all through the WSB GUI, but the backup target volume can't be the same as the volume(s) you are backing up.

    As noted by sauerkrause be sure to set the backup type to VSS Full not VSS Copy too.

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  4. The problem is you need to have exchange management tools installed on the server that is running BE, for it to be able to backup exchange 2010, and those are built for x64. But if you want to try it nonetheless, try and install Exchange 2010 management tools on the 32bit box, or contact Symantec/MS for a solution

    EDIT: I wonder why the downvote - the Exchange mgmt requirement is clearly stated in the BE Job Setup wizard.

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