The purpose of the document is to provide basic information of backup.



Mailbox Server Role

Exchange Server 2007 still uses ESE Engine so backing up the mailbox server role is same as Exchange Server 2003 i.e. backup the database using ESE API or VSS

ESE API allows you to backup one or more storage groups at the sametime however only one backup job will run against a specific storage group.

VSS (Volume Shadow copy Services) was first introduced with Exchange server 2003 in which a shadow copy of the database is created and updated using VSS. The best part is you take backup of the shadow copy during working hours as it will not impose any kind of performance issue.

We should backup the system state of the Mailbox Server Role.

To back Mailbox database follow the link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123693.aspx

Hub Transport Server Role

As Hub transport server stores its information in Active Directory so we don’t really need to backup anything on Hub transport server however we should take the system state backup of the server, however there other things which we should consider in case we want to get the information of the mail queue.

The Mail queue is stored in the file called “mail.que”, it’s an ESE database which stores the message queue in Hub transport server. All we need to do is mount the mail.que from the failed server (located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Transport Roles\data\Queue) on to the new server.

The other thing which we might want to backup would be the Message Tracking and Protocol logs (located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Transport Roles\logs).

Both mail.que and message tracking logs can be backed up at file level.

Client Access Server (CAS) Role.

To backup CAS server we need to backup few files, the first one is the metabase of IIS since it stores the OWA virtual directory. Use below cmdlet to backup metabase

get-owavirtualdirectory “owa (default web site)” | export-clixml owa.xml -depth 1

Edge Transport Server Role

Edge Transport Server Role has easiest backup procedure. Just export the configuration of Edge server using exportedgeconfig.ps1 script located at c:\program files\exchange folder. Apart from that backup system state and the Message Tracking and protocol logs, which are located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\Logs. The message queues that are stored in an ESE database(mail.que) can be mounted on another Edge Transport server.