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Shame on you, Microsoft!
Posted under Church IT by Jim
For some reason, when I made the decision to install our new Exchange 2007 server on Windows Server 2008 the thought that backups might be a problem never occurred to me. But reality set in when I tried to run the new Windows Server Backup in Server 2008 (which replaces the venerable NTBackup) to make a quick backup of the Exchange 2007 data store. It was immediately apparent that this new backup tool could not back up Exchange data anymore. Hmmm…
A few minutes of Googling confirmed what I’d just learned. I found articles like this that describe Windows Server Backup’s inability to handle Exchange data, and such blogs are riddled with comments from people who are pretty upset about this change. Microsoft’s answer seems to be to purchase System Center Data Protection Manager, use another third party app that can do VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) Exchange backups, or use another third party app that can do ESE streaming backups (which is what NTBackup used to do perfectly well). The irony is that the new Windows Server Backup utility can do VSS backups… but not for Exchange data, which has to be handled in a special way.
I guess for those of you that have Enterprise backup software that can already do Exchange VSS and/or ESE backups this is No Big Deal, but for small shops like ours that (so far) have been getting along just fine by backing up critical data with NTBackup, this truly stinks. One a positive note, MozyPro can supposedly back up Exchange 2007 data running on Windows Server 2008, so at least getting our Exchange data off-site will still be possible (we’ve been using MozyPro to get Exchange 2003 on Windows 2003 data off site for a while now). But I liked having the local backup too, which was nearly universally restorable with NTBackup 
Shame on you, Microsoft, for apparently making a marketing decision and removing functionality that has been in a tried-and-true product like NTBackup for over a decade. Hopefully you will see how incredibly bad this decision was and put Exchange backup functionality back into the new Windows Server Backup Utility soon. Having a product that cannot be backed up without third-party help is simply unacceptable…
You can actually install the old NT Backup application on Server 2008 and do the backups the “old way.” I’ve successfully done this on my home server with Server 2008 and Exchange 2007, but I can’t find the link for the life of me now that had the directions. If I come up with the right link I’ll be sure to post back.
Just wanted to give you a heads up that it can be done.
Bingo. Just found the link:
http://cs.thefoleyhouse.co.uk/blogs/karl/archive/2008/02/10/how-to-backup-exchange-2007-on-server-2008.aspx
Thanks for the info, Travis! That looks like a lot of work
Along similar lines, you can edit the registry on a Win2008 box like this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998870.aspx and then NTBackup on another 2003 server with the Exchange snapins will see Exchange 2007 on the Win2008 box and be able to back it up.
But the fact remains that any of these solutions, while better than no backups at all, are just work-arounds and completely unsupported by MS. They need to FIX their blunder and let the new backup utility in Win2008 see Exchange!
Wow! I can see this as being a big problem for their Small Business Server line of products. With Exchange included as part of the suite on one server box, I wonder how Microsoft intends to provide their usual “one-stop shop” solution without a backup tool that can handle Exchange data. As far as third party backups, in my previous consulting company, we pretty much stuck with the Backup Exec line of products, even after Symantec bought them. As long as they didn’t change it too terribly much since version 10 (a nieve statement, I know), I’d still feel rather safe recommending them.
Very good point, Chris. According to various posts from the MS Exchange team here, they will be releasing a version of WSB for SBS that can back up Exchange correctly. That’s good news, but also leaves the rest of us non-SBS users wondering “what about standard Windows??”
[...] felt it only fair to blog about this since I recently ranted about Microsoft’s decision to not include any built-in way to do Exchange 2007 backups on [...]
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