Best Practices to backup / recover a full application Server

Hi, 

I am looking for some best practices to backup / Restore a full blown Application Server (web / exchange / sharepoint / ...) using DPM 2010.

For example: 
There is only one Win 2008 R2 Exchange Server (don't care Virtual or physical)

C:\ ==> windows
D:\ ==> Exchange / other program files

E:\ ==> Exchange DATA Files 
L:\ ==> Exchange Log Files


The server is totally broken. The server blue screens all the time. 
The purpose is to be as quick as possible back up and running.

What should I back up to have an efficient use of backup disks? 

System state? 
Full C, D, E, L disk?
Bare Metal?
Exchange database using DPM exchange application protection? 

If I need to restore what do I have to do?

Install new Operating system on the server (don't care virtual of physical) ?
Restore all drives and my disk comes back? 
Restore System State?


How to backup your Virtual Machine? Questions (Ex: Exchange 2010)
What is de difference between a bare metal backup and a virtual machine backup?

My questions above are may be a beginning to start a discussion about backup / restore procedures.

Thanks in advance.

GRTZ

Arne

Hi Arne,

Those are all good questions and this is a good topic. Every application is different in what needs to protected to ensure you can recover it.

Here is a list of Microsoft workloads and what is needed to protect them:
www.buchatech.com/2011/07/backing-up-applications-with-dpm/

I will try to answer your questions below.

What should I back up to have an efficient use of backup disks?

A bare metal backup would grab everything needed to do a full recovery of the server. Note that BMR includes system state. Once the BMR is restored you could then restore any application specific data for example if you have an Exchange server with a C and D drive and the Exchange data is on the D drive you would restore the BMR then restore Exchange data to the D drive.

If I need to restore what do I have to do?

With a BMR when you do a restore it is much like putting an image back on the server. This will put the server back in the state it was in at the time of the BMR backup. There is no need to reinstall the OS. BMR only backs up the OS (c drive) by default so you would need to protect and restore the other drives as well. There is a way to modify the BMR so that it protects all of your drives. DPM MVP Robert Hedblom wrote a post about how to configure this. Here is the link:
www.robertanddpm.blogspot.com/2010/09/bmr-can-protect-more.html

How to backup your Virtual Machine? Questions (Ex: Exchange 2010)

Bare metal is just like taking an image of the server. Backing up a virtual machine is protecting the virtual hard disk and virtual machine settings. Both are complete server backups.

Hey, thanks for the useful information. Our company is keeping using Easeus todo backup advanced server to do backup of our server. It works quite good. But I still need those information to have a better understanding so that I can have a better handle of my server. Thanks for sharing!

  NP

 

My advise for you is to backup:
1. system state. An image of your system state be used to restore your crashed OS into normal state. Therefore, a system state backup is really needed
2. Second, backup data you think important, like business files or other data. You can set a schedule backup and it would continuous run backup plan to record the changes of your data.
3. Backup the mailboxes in your Exchange Server so you can easily restore them to where they if something goes.
Therefore, I think you need a backup utility to help you do this, backup system state, important data with schedule settings and exchange or sql databases. 
Here I know a backup program - easeus todo backup with its advanced versions is for windows server backup.