Based on your backup and restore requirements the following backup plan settings may suit you best:
Scenario 1:
Your want to protect MS Exchange Server's database(s), Storage Group(s) or entire Information Store. In his environment recovery of a single folder\email scenario occurs once a week or less, and you do not have a tight Service Level Agreement (SLA). A tight SLA here means that you must restore folder\email in a predefined amount of hours.
In this case, you should run backups with the following settings:
- Back up MS Exchange Server on database-level
- Set the Collect metadata backup option to Include list of mailboxes
With these settings you will have your backups created as fast as possible.
Recovery of the databases will be done as usual. If you decide to restore some specific folder/email for some user, you will have to use "Live Browsing" of the backup to select the item you want to restore - this, depending on the size of the database, may be a time consuming operation.
Scenario 2:
You want to protect MS Exchange Server's database(s), Storage Group(s) or entire Information Store. In this environment recovery of a single folder\email is not a common scenario. And even if this happens, the amount of time it will take to restore a folder/email is not a big factor, since the situation is rare.
However, there are some important mailboxes (for example, CEO's mail) that you should back up often and be able to restore quickly.
In this case, you should set up two backup plans for best performance:
- The first backup plan should be set as described in Scenario 1
- The second backup plan should be set as a mailbox-level backup for just the important mailboxes
This way you will be able to run fast backups of MS Exchange Server databases. You will be also able to run frequent backups of important mailboxes and restore their data quickly if necessary.
Scenario 3:
You want to protect MS Exchange Server's database(s), Storage Group(s) or entire Information Store. In this environment recovery of a single folder\email is a common scenario. So when you need to restore a folder/email you should be able to recover mailbox items quickly.
In this case, you should run backups with the following settings:
Back up MS Exchange Server on database-level
Set the "Collect metadata" backup option to "Include mailboxes and folders" or "Include e-mails" (depending on what level of granularity you expect to need to restore)
The backup operation set up this way will run considerably longer, because Acronis Backup will have to collect the metadata. On the other hand you will be able to restore separate folders/emails faster.
For example, collecting database metadata on email-level may make the backup 2.5 - 3 times longer comparing to backup with metadata collection on mailbox-level.
Scenario 4:
You want to protect a number of MS Exchange Server mailboxes.
In this case, a mailbox-level backup should be set.
However, if there are many mailboxes that you want to include in the backup plan, it may be better to switch to the database-level backup. So that the backups will run faster.
If you want to protect all mailboxes in the database\storage group, it is always better to switch to the database-level backup. In this case the backups will run faster and it will still be possible to recover individual mailboxes. Check Scenarios 1-3 to select the optimal one.
Scenario 5:
Admin wants to run full backups as often as possible.
In this case Express full backup should be used. (Acronis Backup Advanced 11.7/11.5 for Exchange: Express Full Backup Method)
Metadata collection settings should be set according to admins need. Unless he has to recover individual emails often then metadata collection option should be set to mailbox level.
Scenario 6:
Admin wants to protect his Exchange environment and to be able to roll back to any point in time without minimum data loss.
In this case CDP backup should be used. (Acronis Backup Advanced 11.7/11.5 for Exchange: Continuous Data Protection)
Metadata collection settings should be set according to admins need. Unless he has to recover individual emails often then metadata collection option should be set to mailbox level.