The Cyber Resilience Blog

Exchange 2007 backup on Server 2008 – update

UPDATE: Exchange 2007 backup on Server 2008 is now possible thanks to a plug-in released with BackupAssist v5.2. Find out more.

Hi all,

This blog is in two sections addressing Exchange 2007 backup on Server 2008 – firstly, complete database backups, and secondly, mailbox backups.

Firstly – complete database backups.

Server 2008 + Exchange 2007 – the in-built block level imaging backup (Windows Server Backup) will not properly backup Exchange 2007 databases. The problem is that the required integrity checks and log truncation is not performed, so the backup will actually be “dirty” – in that it’s similar to the case if the machine is hard powered off or crashes.

SBS 2008 – Windows Server Backup will correctly backup Exchange 2007, thanks to a plug-in that performs these integrity checks and log truncation.

Now, Microsoft had previously announced that they would put the plug-in from SBS 2008 back into Windows Server 2008, and they even gave a release date of Summer 2008. Well, 6 months later, I’ve been unable to find any further information on this.

UPDATE: Exchange 2007 backup on Server 2008 is now possible thanks to a plug-in released with BackupAssist v5.2. Find out more.

Because of this problem – we’ve decided that we’ll write our own routine to properly backup Exchange 2007 using its VSS writer. We’ll build that into our File Replication Engine and Rsync Engine. Obviously this will require a fair amount of testing, and a restore UI to be built as well, so it will be a few months away.

Secondly – mailbox backups

It’s currently not possible to perform mailbox backups of Exchange 2007 on the server itself using our Exchange Mailbox Add-on. There is a workaround that allows you to perform the backups on a different machine, provided you have the Exchange 2003 Management Tools: