How to perform Exchange 2007 server backup. Part II

In my previous article on backing up Exchange, I described the method of adding NTBackup utility. I wanted to describe the methods of backing up the Exchange server with 3rd party applications but it seems that there is no need of doing it as in the recently released Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 by Microsoft there is a plug-in for online backups. Here is what it can do:

• Only VSS backups are supported. There is no support for streaming backups
• You can backup either to a local hard drive or a network share
• There is no remote server backup functionality
• The plug-in supports only full backups of the active copy (if you are using continuous replication).
• When restoring, you do not have to restore the whole backed up volume, but can choose to restore only Exchange application data. (Fig. 1.)

Fig. 1. Choosing the recovery mode type.

The above described is the second method of backing up Exchange Server 2007. In the previous article I described the method of installing NTBackup to Exchange 2007. You can also use the Microsoft Data Protection Manager tool but it's not a free application. There are also a few third party applications, but I haven't tested any of them yet.