MS Exchange - Can it be broken by VDP?

[uwish]

Hello everyone,

I have a client that after he hava messed up with a bunch of things with out any knowledge. He came up to me saying that he Exchange Server broke because of the VDP is backing it up with Agent. Note that he DOES NOT have VDP Advance but just the basic one that comes with Essential Plus.

Question is... Can this happen? Can acctually VDP brake an Exchange Server?

Thank in advance to you all.

[ch1ta]

As far as I know, only advanced version of VDP provides you with the specific agent for VMs that run special MS application such as SQL, Exchange, etc. So, it’s definitely not the agent that should be blamed here, but rather non-application snapshots that are taken by non-Advanced version of VD&P.The point is that without agent preinstalled inside VM, VD&P isn’t capable of taking application aware snapshots, And, according to Micrososft, Exchange non-VSS snapshots aren’t supported and might led to unexpected consequences (seems to be your case).

Moreover, it’s certainly not advisable to backup Exchange server without proper application awareness,since it might affect negatively further recovery process.

So, either upgrade VDP to Advanced version or take a look at the existing 3-party solution that are available on backup/replication markey (like, Veeam Backup and Replication) that does guarantee application consistency, meanwhile, doesn’t require any agent being installed inside the guest.

Thanks.

[snekkalapudi]

Hi,

VDP is not application aware and so does only a Image-level backup. So, Exchange backup will only be a crash consistent one.

On the other side, VDP-A is exclusively for guest level backup. Currently it is aware of Exchange and MS-SQL. VDP-A installs application specific agents inside the VM to take a backup. Also it is available as a standalone purchase.