This section gives an example of how to use Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 in large Exchange organizations where multiple Exchange servers are integrated into a cluster.
Let's see how to get the most out of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 advanced features such as: Continuous Data Protection (CDP), Express full backup method and data deduplication. The express full backup method and data deduplication require the "Express backup and deduplication" add-on (purchased separately).
To be able to revert Exchange data to any custom point in time, we will use the CDP backup scheme. In this scheme, you specify when to perform full backups. In addition, the transaction log files are backed up automatically as soon as they are closed by Exchange. In our case, assume full backups will be performed every night.
To create full backups faster and for them to occupy much less space, we will do full backups to a deduplicating vault by using the express full backup method. With this method, Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 backs up only the changes that have occurred since the previous full backup. Since the unchanged data is already stored in the deduplicating vault, the software only adds a reference to the unchanged data.
To relieve the production server from the load associated with backup operations, we will configure Acronis Backup & Recovery 11.5 to back up the cluster data from any of its passive database copies. If none of the passive copies are available at the moment, we allow the software to back up the active database copy.
As for recovery, let's consider a case, where you need to quickly recover a lost or corrupted Exchange database to the state that it was just before the failure. To allow users to access their e-mails while the Exchange database is still being recovered, we will use Acronis Active Restore.