Basic evaluation of BackupAssist

[Photogregor]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out, how BackupAssist could help in my project of replacing old SBS with Hyper-V solution. May I ask you some in practice questions, that might be interesting for others, who replace SBSes, as well?

I've planned two VMs, one has 250GB (DC and files), the other one 100GB (Exchange) and the use of RDX USB drive for backup. Exchange data base now is about 10GB and files are about 50GB (very little data growth). Up to now, when running daily differential tape backup, the amount of backed up data is about 15GB (including Exchange data base).

If I take the combined daily and archive backup, as it is described in your technical documents, as a basis, I guess I need

1a) 4 320GB RDX cartridges (which is the lowest size) for the daily incremental backups and
1b) and 16 500 GB cartridges for the weekly, monthly and yearly full backups. Right?

Assuming it's Thursday and there was an old single file deleted on Wednesday:
2) Restore of that file would require cartridge from nightly differential backup of Tuesday (if the file was changed on Tuesday) respectively
3) from fullbackup of Monday (if the file was not changed -> not included in differential backup)?

Assuming, there was a single email deleted on Wednesday.
4) BackupAssist cannot restore single mails, but only a complete mailbox, which has to be opened within mail client?
5) I would restore that PST from differential Tuesday cartridge, which includes the Exchange database?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Regards,
Stefano

[Photogregor]

Ok, my questions seems to make no sense. I'll try a different approach:

I would like to backup my SBS, that was split up into two VMs, as simple, as it was before. Before there was a simple internal SCSI tape drive and the only thing that had to be done was to remove the cartridge in the morning and replace it with the next one.

Now I need something which is comparably simple: A backup, that resides on a removable media (that's stored off the server) and offers granular restore. The premises in small shops are: No sufficient WAN uplink to backup into cloud, no room and money to add NAS or media server or tape library or what ever. May be some big and simple internal SATA disks for backup purposes and/or the old SCSI tape drive. And to make it worse: Perferably no backup software on the Hyper-V host, which will be a core installation. Perhaps BA can be installed into a third VM with Windows 8 or Windows Server Essentials (Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Hyper-V does only allow two VMs without the need to achieve additional license).

Any suggestions / experience with such an environment?

Thanks a lot,
Stefano

[casey.burns]

Hi there,

My name is Casey, and I'm with the BackupAssist team. Thanks for posting on our forum.

The first bit of information that you should understand is how BackupAssist handles Exchange. Then, I believe you can make a better decision on how you wish to move forward.

BackupAssist will backup the Exchange server in full when the software is installed on the same server. This same backup is also capable of restoring individual e-mails and contact information when the Exchange add-on is installed on the same server as well. One of your requirements was to restore to .PST, which is also available for you without needing extra space for an additional .PST backup that normally would be required.

The largest hurdle you face is your backup destination. Since you cannot backup to network destination and your actual tape drive would be installed on the host, your options are extremely limited. Pass-through technology is available but can still cause problems. I have a some documentation that you may want to look at regarding pass-through disks below:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/arch ... chine.aspx

Our software can backup to tape, but the tape is read by the host machine, not the virtual. This is where your problem lies. My suggestion is figure out exactly what kind of backup destination you're going to use and also how you plan to connect to it through the virtual machine. Once you figure this out for sure, we will be much better suited to answer these kinds of questions for you.

I hope this helps, please let me know if you have anything further to add.
Kind regards,

Casey Burns
BackupAssist Support