Exchange 2010 multi-site DAG backup using SME

[ZIVRIVKIS]

Setup:

Multi-site DAG

Primary DC:

EX 1 with 1 active 2 passive db

EX 2 with 1 active 1 passive db

EX 3 with 1 active no passive db

(this is an unbalanced DAG due to shortage of available disk atm. This issue will be addressed in the new year)

DR DC:

EX 4 with 3 passive no active db

Looking to create a backup solution using SnapManager for Exchange 6.0.2 and NetBackup w/Data Domain.

I am thinking of doing the following:

1. FRP Backup every 3 hrs on all servers in the DAG using SME

2. Daily FULL backup of all DBs on EX4 (passive copies only) using SME followed by Full using NetBackup on Monday through Friday (since all data is going to Data Domain dedup will take care of backup sizes)

I've read posts and some of the guides on the subject, but real life advise would be greatly appreciated.

[martin_fisher]

What you have proposed sounds fine, make sure you create the SME backup job on all the servers within the DAG, just in case the Windows Cluster resource is moved to another node, otherwise your backups wont run.

You will probably also need to set a switch for the SME job to backup the passive node of the DAG, instead of the active node (Passive DB copy, instead of Active DB copy).

With the FRP backups, are you planning on keep 4/8 of these, i.e 1 every 3hours, 4x in a 12 hour period? or just 4x FRP's throughout the day?

[ZIVRIVKIS]

Martin,

Thank you for the advice. For the FRP backups I am thinking of doing 6 copies starting at 2am and finishing up at 5pm (1 copy every 3 hours in 15 hrs). Keep 3 days of those. I set the priority on the netbackup to "10" for the exchange backups but I can't be sure that they will start at 6 exactly. Since I don't know the exact time of the netbackup I am hesitant to keep doing FRPs during the backup window.