When backing up an Exchange database is the entire .edb file backed up each time or is it just the parts of the file that have changed? I’m using urbackup for quite a few Exchange servers over the internet and the exchange db takes a long time to upload (of course) and then takes a a lot of space for each copy.
I’m using btrfs if that makes a difference with this. I do have hashing enabled and transfer mode set to block level differences.
Just did a bit more research. I’m guessing this is due to the maintenance tasks Exchange is running moving blocks around. Seems to be a lot of people with similar issues with other backup software too.
One client with Exchange 2007 has a 38GB data store in Exchange. Urbackup is showing about 19GB backed up daily when I select the client in the web interface. The size of the file in the web browser is showing 38GB for each day.
So would it be possible to have different backup schedules for different folders, and maybe even simultaneous backups? What I’m finding is with sites with slower upload speeds they may spend a week or more uploading the exchange database and so the incremental backup on their file stores doesn’t get run very often. Ideally I could set the exchange database to be backed up say once per week but still run an incremental backup on other folders daily.
Yes, that would be a long term goal, but it does not have priority currently.
OK.
As a workaround would there be problems with installing urbackup to 2 different folders on a client and setting up a separate account for each instance on the urbackup server? Guessing I’d have to create a new service for the 2nd instance?
I’m guessing you’re not using Exchange VSS for these and just using a full disk shadow copy?
It looks like using the Exchange Writer would allow smaller Exchange incremental backups as well as allowing the exchange database to be marked as backed up so the log files will be cleared.
Some info
Yes, it is using VSS in the “no component” mode. That is bSelectComponents in IVssBackupComponents::SetBackupState (vsbackup.h) - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn is false. Because of that all Writers (including the Exchange writer) on the volume get notified. The backup type is VSS_BT_FULL which means Exchange should clear the log files.