Performing and Monitoring Backups

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3

Performing backups of your servers is your first line of defense in planning for a disaster. You must have a well-planned and well-rehearsed disaster recovery plan for your Microsoft Exchange organization. Your disaster recovery plan should include backing up Exchange data and Active Directory directory service data daily. You must back up all critical data from many sources, including server configuration, the Active Directory database, and the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service. You should also back up all logged event and performance data. Make sure that you back up records such as Active Directory data, application software, Exchange Server 2007 message tracking log files, and databases and log files. For more information about disaster recovery planning, see Disaster Recovery.

You can use the NTBackup tool (included with Microsoft Windows Server 2003) to back up Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2007 data. You can also use a third-party backup tool that supports Exchange 2007. The NTBackup tool helps you back up Exchange 2007 databases, directories, selected files, and System State data, which includes Windows Server 2003 operating system registry information.

Make sure that the previous night’s backup jobs have run, and then investigate any errors or warnings. Make sure that you have a procedure for media rotation, labeling, and storage, according to the backup strategy being used. If applicable (based on the type of the backup that was run), determine whether the transaction logs have been removed from the disk as part of the backup process.

Proactively monitoring the successful completion of your Exchange backups is critical to success of your disaster recovery plan. Regular testing of the disaster recovery plan for your organization's Exchange infrastructure should be performed in a lab environment that mimics your production environment as closely as practicable.

For More Information

For information about other important daily operations tasks, see Daily Tasks.