I have an Exchange 2010 server that has one database over 330GB. Because the customer’s Internet bandwidth is low, I’ve only done one full back over a year ago, everything else has been block level. I have also ran into issues when restoring a single mailbox where I’ve had to restore the entire database just to get to one user’s mailbox. What I’d like to do is break up that database into at least 4 smaller databases so they are more manageable for both full back and restore scenarios.
What I’m looking to accomplish is a daily block level backup of each database, then have a scheduled full backup of each database on a weekend, maybe every couple of months, but I need to do full backup of just one database per weekend, bandwidth won’t support more.
So do I setup one job for each database that does both the block level nightly and then the database on a specified day of the month, like 3rd Friday every other month? My concern with that is I can’t really predict how long each job will take and I’ve been told that if I chain Exchange database backups, it will only do full backups. Can the schedule for Exchange database backups overlap or will they error out like image backups do?
Or do I setup one job that only schedules block level and select all databases and let that run nightly then have a separate job that does an occasional full backup? Would the block level backup then know where to pick up at?
Hope that makes sense. Looking for some input. Thanks.