Over the years I've puzzled over the best way to back up my Exchange server.
I have always used ArcServe or Backup Exec to archive to tape, but I'm forgetful (or just plain lazy) and don't take the tapes off site. So, if the office burns down, the tapes would be lost (or at best have a three storey building sat on top of them in the fire safe).
Ideally I'd like to do off site backup, but I have a database of over 100Gb! It wouldn't want to copy that over the net every single day.
The requirements:
* Keep existing daily ArcServe tape backup working
* Copy database(s) to remote location
* Ability to restore DB without custom media (ArcServe is a 2Gb download!)
* Cheap.... very cheap!
The Solution:
Usually the best way to minimise the data being transferred would be to do an incremental backup. This type of backup only copies changes since the last Full backup. However, I do a full backup (with ArcServe) every day, so an incremental backup would only have the few emailsthat came in between the daily full backup and the incremental backup... no use to me if the office burned down.
I decided to get NTBackup to run a daily full backup to a directory on a remote server in the same site. This gives me the facility of a near line backup should I need to do a quick restore if things go wrong. I had an old Dell PowerEdge 750 knocking around, so I stuck a couple of 1.5TB disks in it and now I have loads of space!
I also decided to split my Exchange 2003 database into multiple (in my case: four) Storage Groups. This is always a good move as it should reduce the outage period if you have to restore a backup. It also allows me to schedule a backup for one quarter of my data at a time, allowing me to be more flexible.
So now I have the following:
ArcServe - Daily full backup to tape
NTBackup
* Storage Group 1 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
* Storage Group 2 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
* Storage Group 3 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
* Storage Group 4 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
Now all I have to do is get those files off onto a remote storage...
Let me introduce you to rsync. It is a protocol (and application) designed to help with synchronising files over a network with the minimal amount of data transfer. Instead of just looking to see if a single fie has changed, it'll actually look at the data in that file to see what has changed.
I have always used ArcServe or Backup Exec to archive to tape, but I'm forgetful (or just plain lazy) and don't take the tapes off site. So, if the office burns down, the tapes would be lost (or at best have a three storey building sat on top of them in the fire safe).
Ideally I'd like to do off site backup, but I have a database of over 100Gb! It wouldn't want to copy that over the net every single day.
The requirements:
* Keep existing daily ArcServe tape backup working
* Copy database(s) to remote location
* Ability to restore DB without custom media (ArcServe is a 2Gb download!)
* Cheap.... very cheap!
The Solution:
Usually the best way to minimise the data being transferred would be to do an incremental backup. This type of backup only copies changes since the last Full backup. However, I do a full backup (with ArcServe) every day, so an incremental backup would only have the few emailsthat came in between the daily full backup and the incremental backup... no use to me if the office burned down.
I decided to get NTBackup to run a daily full backup to a directory on a remote server in the same site. This gives me the facility of a near line backup should I need to do a quick restore if things go wrong. I had an old Dell PowerEdge 750 knocking around, so I stuck a couple of 1.5TB disks in it and now I have loads of space!
I also decided to split my Exchange 2003 database into multiple (in my case: four) Storage Groups. This is always a good move as it should reduce the outage period if you have to restore a backup. It also allows me to schedule a backup for one quarter of my data at a time, allowing me to be more flexible.
So now I have the following:
ArcServe - Daily full backup to tape
NTBackup
* Storage Group 1 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
* Storage Group 2 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
* Storage Group 3 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
* Storage Group 4 - Daily full backup to in office Server - 25Gb
Now all I have to do is get those files off onto a remote storage...
Let me introduce you to rsync. It is a protocol (and application) designed to help with synchronising files over a network with the minimal amount of data transfer. Instead of just looking to see if a single fie has changed, it'll actually look at the data in that file to see what has changed.
This is ideal for an Exchange backup where the majority of the data will not have changed, and only new emails need to be copied over.
It works on a client/server model, so you have a copy of the rsync application of both ends of the connection.
Being a Windows kinda guy, I then got myself a copy of Deltacopy and installed it on the office backup machine and my home PC.
Then I made sure I had configured my home firewall to allow through port TCP/873 and to direct it at my PC... don't forget to open up your windows firewall too if you have it turned on.
Then I scheduled four DeltaCopy jobs to take each of the Storage Group backups over onto the Home PC. The initial backup takes an age (25Gb each SG), but after that it's much quicker. You can configure DeltaCopy to send a status email after each job.
You will receive a message like:
Profile SG1 ran successfully.
Execution log
-------------
sending incremental file list
./
SG1.bkf
sent 1460800130 bytes received 1130102 bytes 161138.63 bytes/sec total size is 18515066880 speedup is 12.66 Profile 'SG1' executed in 4753285 milliseconds. It ran successfully.
So you can see that the file was 18.5Gb, the remote PC received 1.1Gb and sent out 161Mb. This is a massive saving as shown by the "speedup" value of 12 (this means that it only transferred 1/12th of the data you would normally need).
It works on a client/server model, so you have a copy of the rsync application of both ends of the connection.
Being a Windows kinda guy, I then got myself a copy of Deltacopy and installed it on the office backup machine and my home PC.
Then I made sure I had configured my home firewall to allow through port TCP/873 and to direct it at my PC... don't forget to open up your windows firewall too if you have it turned on.
Then I scheduled four DeltaCopy jobs to take each of the Storage Group backups over onto the Home PC. The initial backup takes an age (25Gb each SG), but after that it's much quicker. You can configure DeltaCopy to send a status email after each job.
You will receive a message like:
Profile SG1 ran successfully.
Execution log
-------------
sending incremental file list
./
SG1.bkf
sent 1460800130 bytes received 1130102 bytes 161138.63 bytes/sec total size is 18515066880 speedup is 12.66 Profile 'SG1' executed in 4753285 milliseconds. It ran successfully.
So you can see that the file was 18.5Gb, the remote PC received 1.1Gb and sent out 161Mb. This is a massive saving as shown by the "speedup" value of 12 (this means that it only transferred 1/12th of the data you would normally need).
I hope this helps you out.. if it does, please click on the ads on this page to show your appreciation.