Posted by Veeam Backup and Replication gives the possibility to create a consistent backup from your Exchange farm. This can be a standalone Exchange system or an Exchange DAG cluster. It makes use of the Microsoft Exchange VSS writers inside the VM. The Veeam server creates a RPC connection to the Exchange servers, and place some backup scripts on the /ADMIN$ share. When the backup starts Veeam starts this script which talks to the Microsoft VSS Writers to create a consistent backup.
Enable application aware processing
To create an application aware backup in Veeam you must enable the “Application aware processing” option in the Veeam job properties. Then go to applications for application specific settings. In this tab you can configure VSS, Log and error settings. Configure settings which are suitable for your systems.
User rights Veeam Exchange backup
Select credentials which have full rights (read / write) to all files in the folder with the database.
For direct restore to your exchange farm the user must also have full access to the Mailbox. This user permissions can be set with the following command:
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Add-MailboxPermission –Identity “<target_mailbox>” -User “<user_account>” -AccessRights FullAccess –InheritanceType All |
When you have a service account for restoring to all mailboxes you can use Exchange impersonation. This can be set with the following command:
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New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Name "Test" -Role ApplicationImpersonation -User "Test User" -CustomRecipientScope "contoso.local/TargetUsers" |
Back-up Exchange DAG Cluster
When you create a backup of an Exchange DAG Cluster node, default all active and passive nodes are available for restore. So theoretically you only have one backup of 1 exchange node.
Tips for creating backup of your Exchange DAG Cluster:
- Backup both of your exchange servers in one backup job, this gives you better dedup results.
- Don’t backup your exchange nodes in separate jobs at the same time, this can cause a failover.
- Veeam backup can cause load on your exchange server, the best situation is to create a new exchange cluster node server with only passive mailboxes.
- When your exchange servers failover during a backup you can increase the failover time of your exchange cluster nodes. Commands for changing the cluster parameters:
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cluster /prop SameSubnetDelay=2000:DWORD cluster /prop CrossSubnetDelay=4000:DWORD cluster /prop CrossSubnetThreshold=10:DWORD cluster /prop SameSubnetThreshold=10:DWORD |