Verifying NTbackup actually has backed up the mail store

Last week we had a situation where exchange got slammed with 15940 queues,
which I have yet had a reply on as to why. It made me wonder if the mail
store is actually getting backed up, so how can I check without attempting to
do a restore? I have a second backup going that runs incrementals during the
week due to the full backup done via the wizard taking 14 hours to complete.
I start it at 9 PM now on a Friday so it doesnt impact the server. When I
look at the backup file in the restore part of ntbackup, I see the mail store
folders, but they are empty, and I havent found a way to look at the actual
backup files the wizard makes.

Pedro
Tue Mar 25 11:13:29 PDT 2008

there are commecrial products that allow you to look into an exchange backup
and extract contents from it if you need.
however I would just look at the ntbackup log files and see if they report
success on the copy.
That would be a good indicator.

However it also interesting to have a brickevel backup of your exchange
server. We use both methods: a complete backup through ntbackup and a
brick-level backup using ExMerge (you can download it form MS website).
ExMerge backs up all server mailboxes to PST files which makes it very
flexible to restore to other versions of exchange and/or simply open them up
in Outlook directly.
The only downside with exMerge is that it cannot backup the Public Folder
stroe (ie public folders). It only backs up the private store (user
mailboxes).


"Todd" <Todd@discussions.microsoft.com> escreveu na mensagem
news:B89A69EA-9C99-42C1-9FF5-8FA6E20943ED@microsoft.com...
> Last week we had a situation where exchange got slammed with 15940 queues,
> which I have yet had a reply on as to why. It made me wonder if the mail
> store is actually getting backed up, so how can I check without attempting
> to
> do a restore? I have a second backup going that runs incrementals during
> the
> week due to the full backup done via the wizard taking 14 hours to
> complete.
> I start it at 9 PM now on a Friday so it doesnt impact the server. When I
> look at the backup file in the restore part of ntbackup, I see the mail
> store
> folders, but they are empty, and I havent found a way to look at the
> actual
> backup files the wizard makes.

Al
Tue Mar 25 13:23:45 PDT 2008

You can't drill down into the mail store backup in NTBACKUP - its basically
a backup of the entire thing which you would restore to new box (for
disaster recovery) or a Recovery Storage Group if you had a mailbox issue.
Note the latter can also be handled by third party "brick level" backups but
either are rarely necessary if you've configured deleted item and deleted
email account retention periods.

As far as whether it's being backed up it should show in the NTBACKUP
logfile. Something like "Backup of "XXXXSERVER\Microsoft Information
Store\First Storage Group" with the amount of data shown afterwards. I also
do separate full and incremental backups so the full should show "Backup
Type: Normal" while the incrementals should show "Backup Type: Incremental".

See the backup/restore whitepaper here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/techinfo/productdoc/alpha.mspx

As for your other post I don't see it at my end but you may want to review
responses to the post "Anyone using SpamLion?" from Monday as Jim has some
good exchange setup info in there...

--
Allan Williams



"Todd" <Todd@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B89A69EA-9C99-42C1-9FF5-8FA6E20943ED@microsoft.com...
> Last week we had a situation where exchange got slammed with 15940 queues,
> which I have yet had a reply on as to why. It made me wonder if the mail
> store is actually getting backed up, so how can I check without attempting
> to
> do a restore? I have a second backup going that runs incrementals during
> the
> week due to the full backup done via the wizard taking 14 hours to
> complete.
> I start it at 9 PM now on a Friday so it doesnt impact the server. When I
> look at the backup file in the restore part of ntbackup, I see the mail
> store
> folders, but they are empty, and I havent found a way to look at the
> actual
> backup files the wizard makes.