MS Exchange server on FreeBSD?

[Anthony Atkielski]

Ted Mittelstaedt writes:

> Only if you purchase a backup software.  If you want to use windows
> backup you must shut down exchange because windows backup will not
> back up open files.

You can back up a running Exchange server with the standard software
provided with Exchange and Windows.

Some third-party products also provide special backup capability for
Exchange, but you don't have to buy any third-party product to back up
a running server.  If you use a third-party product to back up the
system and it doesn't have special Exchange capability, you must either
stop the Exchange server during the backup or exclude the Exchange
databases from the backup.  No surprise here.

> Also, a file based backup is pointless because it takes the mail store
> in one fell swoop, it does not back up (nor allow you to restore)
> individual mailboxes.

You don't lose individual mailboxes in Exchange, so they don't have to
be restored (unless you delete them accidentally, which good
administrators do not do).

Nevertheless, you can restore individual mailboxes if you have deletion
retention configured and you're still within the retention time. This
was not a feature of the original release of Exchange, but it exists
now.  I think it's a bad idea, but it was developed in response to
customer demand.

> This is yet another high-cost item, backup software that is written
> to use the hooks in exchange to back it up is expensive.

Life is tough.

> By contrast under UNIX, you can use tar to backup the /var/mail
> directories and you can definitely restore an individual mailbox
> if you want to.

You can do that with Exchange, too.

However, I normally advise mail administrators that they have to train
their users to understand that deleted e-mail is gone.  In fact, I
suggest that they not even tell users that e-mail is recoverable, unless
they want to spend every waking hour restoring mailboxes.

-- 
Anthony