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How much disk space do I need for an Exchange 2010 database shadow copy?
Hi,
We are configuring Exchange 2010 backups through EMC Networker NMM 2.3. NMM 2.3 uses VSS in order to perform the backup. During the configuration of the backup we need to specify a volume where the spanoshots are going to be placed.
We are going to create a LUN for the VSS backups. How big does the LUN needs to be in order to hold the DB snapshots? For the time being the LUN holding the DBs is 350 GB and the current DB is 250 GB. We have rigid quotas and the DB should go beyond the 350 GB.
Also we are sending the backups to a Data Domain device and the current strategy is to run a daily full backup of the Exchange DB. Our understanding is that configuring the Networker policy to stateless server will get a single snapshot which will be deleted once the backup is completed.
Other questions:
Is the shadow copy 1:1 or is the image compressed?
We have been running full backups and we have seen that the first backup was about 1GB in size and the second backup was 319 GB. At this point shouldn't the 2nd full backup have the same size or perhaps be a little larger than the first one since we have added a new TEST database and then run the second backup?
CarlosRojas
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June 24th, 2012 23:00
Hi Llarava,
I understand you are using software provider (Microsoft VSS) and not any Hardware provider, correct?
In this case you can configure VSS to limit the size of the shadow copies, by going to Storage Management, right click on any of the disks, select properties and then Shadow Copy tab.
Anyway shadows are not 1:1, I would say that, if you don't have limit it should be around 50%, however this is not official answer, as I never got it from EMC, not even from Engineering.
Maybe somebody from EMC can give us a hand here, but again, you can set a limit in the size of the snapshots at VSS level.
Also remember to change the path for the shadow, as by default the shadow will be created in it's own disk, under System Volume Information so, if you want to place all shadows let's say in drive S:\ you need to manually change it in VSS so it points to S:\ instead of C:\, D:\ etc.
About the snapshot policy yes, Serverless backup will take one snapshot and will roll it over to backup device, in this case Data Domain. Are you using DFA (Direct File Access)? Are the Exchange servers storage nodes? Is it Stand Alone or DAG? Just a reminder that NMM DO NOT support dedicated storage nodes in DAG environments, only Storage Node.
Thank you.
Carlos.