What are the requirements to get Exchange backed up and recovered without errors? (Exchange 5.5 sp3 on NT4 sp5 or higher)

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0. A lot of luck! I'm not kidding.

1. Read the BSM Exchange admin manual thoroughly and install latest version (v2.0.003 as of April 2001)

2. Use MSEXCH: (not MSEXCH:DS and MSEXCH:IS) for full backups. I ran into problems in recovery if I didn't use MSEXCH: to backup, e.g. it restored everything else except priv.edb or it only restored priv.edb!

3. Switch off circular logging in your Exchange. With circular logging on, you lose one big safety factor, i.e., the ability to roll forward based on a previous version of full backup using transaction logs, in case your current backup tape is unrecoverable.

4. Do NOT schedule any other saves (either local or network) into the same tape drive (and storage node/server) your Exchange is backing to. Yup, you got it, serialise your Exchange savesets. If not, you may run into trouble recovering, with errors saying recovery failed after reading say xxGB (network read error or similar).

5. Test if you can restore it in an isolated lab environment with isolated PDC, Networker server and Exchange box. Test as frequently as you can.