Exchange 2000 Backup and Restore

Email systems depend on many hardware and software components. If any element fails to operate in the required manner, if the hardware suffers a catastrophic failure, or if a physical disaster such as an electricity outage afflicts the hardware, you must have good system backups to get users back online as quickly as possible.

The Exchange 2000 Server installation procedure enhances the standard Windows 2000 Server Backup utility (ntbackup.exe) to support the Exchange Store's transactional nature. These enhancements add support for Exchange 2000's .edb and .stm file formats, let backup agents (i.e., ntbackup.exe or third-party products) copy databases to tape without shutting down Exchange services, and let you select which servers and databases to back up or restore. Understanding the basics of the most important and useful disaster-recovery processes—including full backups, snapshot and clone backups, and the general recovery procedure—can help you prepare for disasters and recover from them quickly. . . .