We are looking at using hardware based VSS Snaps of Exchange 2010 but hear that the block change rate can be form 30%-80% due to the Online Exchange DB maint tasks such as db reorgs etc. We currently backup Exchange 2003 with a every other day rolling full (50% of Env Gets full every other day 17TB).
Our Exchange 2010 Env will be 3sites with 40K users each site and 1 DAG encompassing all 3 sites. At each site will host its own Active DB's and One of the other sites passives. (Ex: Site A manges Site B's Passive, Site B will manage Site C Passive and Ste C will manage Site A's passive db copies. All that said we would love to get our backup application out of the mix and just use disk snaps but see that solution not cost effective if 50-80% block change rate.
It seems challenging to get a read for what other shops see for block change rates and potential solutions. The 3-4 Big Vendors state that very few shops more than 20K users have moved to Exchange 2010 and cant really provide a good example for 120K users. Our options appear to be the the following
1) Disk Based Snaps - Fast / No Need for backup App / Tape or Vtape
2) Windows Server backup - Cant Backup passive DAGs
3) MS DPM - Just another Backup Application
4) Deploy our current backup App
5) Disk snap mount on linux and do flat / file based backup - somewhat cumbersome to support
6) MS JBOD / DAS Recommendation - Support and scalability nightmares...
We are hoping others could share their exp with larger organizations that have already deployed Exchange 2010, also if the block change rate is high I couldn't see a VSS snap being very Dedupe friendly ...
Regards,
Charles
