beingexchanged: No backup for you!

Of course we all all knew there would be rough spots for early-adopters of Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008, but this one is a bit hard to handle.

Based on the information in This Blog Entry, there is no built-in online backup tool for Exchange 2007 on Server 2008. That's right, none.

The suggested options are to use either 3rd Party VSS-based backup tools or 3rd-Party ESE-based backup tools, or else use Microsoft's Data Protection Manager to handle it. While this solves the problem, it does mean you're forced to throw a lot of money at the system to fix it.

Some may ask, "Why not just use a replication tool?" Good question. Replication systems like Double-Take effectively protect the data, but do not truncate the log files that have already been committed to the database. That means that your log files will continue to grow - often at an alarming rate - essentially forever. You could turn on circular logging, but NO ONE RECOMMENDS THIS, including Microsoft. So you are left with two choices, get a LOT of disk for logs, or buy a 3rd Party backup tool or DPM.

The SBS version of Exchange 2007 on Server 2008 *will* have these tools, so it can be done with the native 2008 backup solution, and Microsoft has confirmed that the API's to do it are in Exchange 2007 SP1, they just didn't build it for the full Server 2008 platforms.

Hopefully, that just means it will be in Server 2008 SP1, and that we won't be expected to shell out more cash to fix Exchange 2007!