Re: Exchange 2003 Backup Options?

Copy on Write providers have a steep performance penalty while a snapshot is
in place. For each overwrite, you have to read the block, write the block
to a "difference area", then overwrite with the changed data. If you plan
to use a COW provider, you want to minimize the number of snapshots, and the
time they are kept in place. You'll likely want to take the snapshot, copy
to disk, release the snapshot, then stream the disk copy to tape.


"Usenet" <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:usenet-D2FBFB.13152009082008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <ORIJKih#IHA.2128@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Martin Blackstone [MVP]" <martinb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I think you're doing it wrong. Now I don't use EMC (I use NetApp), but
you
should be able to do something.
The LUNs shouldn't be in the VMFS. You should be able create separate
LUNs
on the SAN and present those to the Exchange server via ISCSI or FC
(whatever you are using).

Here are the very basics of we do it.
ESX is installed on a server.
All VM's and related data are stored on the SAN via NFS.
Separate volumes for the LUN's are created on the SAN then presented to
the
servers via ISCSI.

You should talk to your EMC VAR or someone about the correct
configuration.
You don't necessarily need to engage them for profe

Thanks for the reply, perhaps I explained it badly:

ESX is installed on a couple of servers.
LUNs are defined on the SAN and presented to the ESX servers over fiber.
Those LUNs are typically VMFS formatter and VMs and associated drives
created on them.

I've been doing some googling and I believe that as we use Commvault I
could just get their Exchange agent and do VSS backups directly to tape
i.e. I wouldn't have the bottleneck that backups using the streaming
Exchange backup API presents?


.

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