Backup of the entire Microsoft Exchange Information Store for a mail server without agents and without taking the server offline. The most time- and cost-effective method for disaster recovery purposes. Other mail servers that are supported include Lotus Notes/Domino, Groupwise and SendMail.

Mail Servers (Exchange, Lotus Domino, Groupwise)

The entire Information Store (IS) is backed up without agents and without affecting end users.

Data Vault supports “hot,” online backup of Microsoft® Exchange 2000 and 2003. The entire Information Store (IS) is backed up without agents and without affecting end users. Due to DVC’s unique delta-blocking capabilities, each backup captures all changes (logically equivalent to a “full” tape backup) while dramatically reducing the amount of data transmitted and stored (logically equivalent to an “incremental” tape backup). During a restore, simply select the date of backup and Data Vault system handles the reconstruction of the Information Store — no need for you to track the “full” or “incremental” backup.

Overview

Data Vault service support two types of backup of Microsoft® Exchange data: Message Level Restore (MLR) and full Information Store (IS). The former allows for online backup and restore at the mailbox, folder or message level. This is convenient but cumbersome for Disaster Recovery (DR) purposes. To address DR, DVC offers full IS backup and restore features. With this feature, the Exchange IS is backed up or restored at the data store level without loading agents on the Exchange server, thereby being more time and resource efficient for DR purposes. Many companies perform the IS backup on a weekly basis and perform the MLR backup on a daily basis.

How it works

Backup — Microsoft® developed Exchange with the backup requirement in mind by providing APIs that, when accessed by DVC, will command Exchange to dump the entire Information Store. The DVC Gateway simply asks the specified Exchange server to stream the IS data to the Gateway where it is delta-blocked, compressed, encrypted and transmitted to the DVC data center. During this process, all pending transactions are committed and the transactions logs are truncated while continuing to process all new transactions (i.e. incoming and outgoing mail). The latest version of the Information Store is stored on the DVC Gateway. This process is a totally supported Microsoft® function and guarantees compatibility with your existing Microsoft® systems.

Restore — During a restore, the DVC Gateway will restore the entire IS or an individual data store (depending on how the backup was configured) to the target Exchange server. The target Exchange server can be the original backed up server or a new, different server in the same Active Directory® forest. The DVC Gateway always keeps a copy of the latest snapshot of the Exchange IS. Past experience has shown that most Exchange IS restores are for the latest backup and therefore, most Exchange IS restores are accomplished quickly over the local LAN. If older data is required, Data Vault service can access the data in the DVC data center through the WAN or DVC can ship a portable data vault to your site within 24-48 hours of a disaster being declared. As with all DVC activities, there is no extra charge for shipping the portable data vault.

What is Supported

Data Vault supports IS backup and restore capabilities for Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003. Since Exchange 2003 supports multiple data stores, Data Vault service supports backup and restore of each data store individually (version 6 and greater). At present, you cannot recover to a Recovery Storage Group (RSG) although the normal backup and recovery will not be affected if your organization uses RSGs.

Technical Specifications

• Backups and restores are performed at the IS or data store level, thereby executing in a time and resource efficient manner for DR purposes

• All backups are performed without taking the Exchange server off-line

• Restores of the latest backup can be performed quickly over the local LAN via the DVC Gateway

• No agents

• Support for Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003