Exchange 2010 SnapShots

[Bryan Rogers]

Per Nimble's Exchange 2010 best practice I am presenting database and log storage to my exchange server via the guest iSCSI software initiator. I will put the database and log volumes in a collection and snapshot using Microsoft VSS synchronization. The Windows operating system disk will be presented through vmware on a vmfs5 volume.

My question is should I snapshot the db, logs and os disks at the same time? If I need to recover to a point in time shouldn't the os disks be from the same time the db and logs were snapshot or does it not matter? I can't put these in the same collection because of the synchronization conflict (Microsoft VSS vs. Vmware vCenter). I was thinking of lagging the OS snapshot 5 minutes behind the db/logs snapshot.

Also - do I need to use any synchronization when snap shotting a Windows OS vmdk that has Exchange installed bearing in mind that the logs and databases are in a different collections and use synchronization.

Thanks.

[etang40 · Accepted solution]

Bryan,

I don't see any issues with this approach particularly if you are doing a snapshot just 5 minutes prior to the VSS sync'd snapshot of the Exchange volumes.

As a best practice, I typically configure any VMFS datastore volume with vCenter synchronized snapshots.  You can probably get away with no-synchronization for a VMFS datastore volume with OS drives but I like knowing that with vCenter sync'd snapshots that I'm getting a mountable RPO that is VMware consistent.

Hope this helps.

Eddie

[jwagner137]

Bryan,

You're question:

Bryan Rogers wrote:

My question is should I snapshot the db, logs and os disks at the same time?

Also - do I need to use any synchronization when snap shotting a Windows OS vmdk that has Exchange installed bearing in mind that the logs and databases are in a different collections and use synchronization.

The answer to both is no.  You do not need or want the os in the same collection as the db and logs.