IBM DS6000, DS8000 manual Granular Recovery Technology Benefits, Performing Exchange VSS Backups

Traditionally, this protection is primarily accomplished through online backups of the Exchange databases. If organizations also need to recover individual email messages or mailboxes, separate slow, error-prone, “brick-level” mailbox backups are typically required to recover these individual items without restoring the entire Exchange database.

Granular Recovery Technology Benefits

The main benefits of Backup Exec’s Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) include:

•Eliminate separate, slow individual mailbox backups completely.

•Perform fast single-pass VSS backups of Exchange databases and still recover individual mailboxes, individual messages, and private and public folders. NOTE: For VSS, this feature currently only supports On- host backups. Support for GRT from off-host VSS backups is planned for a future release.

•Works with or without the need for recovery storage groups (RSGs)

•Cut backup time and storage in half by performing fast, single-pass Exchange database backups

•Reduce storage/media costs

•Enable granular recovery or complete database recovery of all Exchange data

With Backup Exec 11d GRT-enabled backups, Exchange mail messages, mailboxes, and folders are restored individually without having to restore the entire Exchange database—and without mailbox level backups. All that is required is a single-pass full or incremental backup of Exchange, including VSS snapshots, so this feature dramatically decreases the time required to back up mailboxes while also reducing the storage requirement. You can now recover critical Exchange data in seconds, including individual emails, individual mailboxes, public folders, calendars, and contacts from a fast, single-pass Exchange database backup.

Performing Exchange VSS Backups

The Exchange Agent supports the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), a snapshot provider service that is only available on Windows Server 2003 or later. Using VSS, a point in time view of the Exchange database is snapped and then backed up, leaving the actual Exchange database open and available for users.

Exchange 2003 VSS Backup Solution	Page 61	David West, David Hartman
For IBM Storage DS8000/DS6000		©Copyright IBM Corp. 2007
And Symantec Backup Exec 11d