[SOLVED] MS Exchange with PBS(VSS Support)

[inno-forum]

Hi,

how do you backup MS Exchange properly?
The VM based Backups are nice to have, but they are not consistent in the matter of the Exchange DB transaction log.
Do the PBS support the VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) backup?

Without VSS the exchange does not know that there has been a backup and the logs are not deleted, so the DB becomes inconsistent if they are deleted manually
Thanks

 

[_gabriel]

vss is supported if qemu tools are installed.

 

[Dunuin]

See: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Qemu-guest-agent

 

[Tmanok]

I think what the OP means is that the backups are not application aware. This is an issue I've brought up to the PVE devs before. The guidance for MS SQL and other large databases is to create a dump (transaction log and db dump) which will force the database to create one or more files necessary to restore when you perform disaster recovery and want crash consistency of the huge memory bound application of a database.

I have a script that dumps my pgsql dbs for this reason and all the windows databases that run in my clients' DCs backup manually as well. I'm not sure about Exchange. Sorry.

Cheers,


Tmanok

 

[fabian]

the qemu-guest-agent is responsible for that - under Windows it should hook into VSS, under Linux you have to write the integration yourself since there is no VSS-like thing provided by the OS.

 

[inno-forum]

the qemu-guest-agent is responsible for that - under Windows it should hook into VSS, under Linux you have to write the integration yourself since there is no VSS-like thing provided by the OS.

I see that the "QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider" is installed.
Anbietername: "QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider"
Anbietertyp: Software
Version: 103.0.0
but when I take a backup, the Transaction logs will be not deleted.
Should I configure something?
If the QEMU Guest Agent informs the system of the backup, the logs should be deleted automatically.

 

[tom]

but when I take a backup, the Transaction logs will be not deleted.

You need an Exchange aware backup tool for this. Proxmox Backup Server cannot do this.

 

[_gabriel]

if you only rely on PBS , you can enable Circular Logging or use a "diskshadow" script described here.

 

[dpl]

We use manually:
https://microsoft.github.io/CSS-Exchange/Databases/VSSTester/
for Clean Up / Purging the Exchange Transaction Logs after Proxmox VM Snapshot Backups