wp_209_hicommand_protection_manager

Enterprise Storage

Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager Software for Microsoft

Exchange Server 2003

An Application Brief

By Koichiro Nakajima

December 2005

Executive Summary

Organizations using Microsoft Exchange for e-mail services depend on Exchange

backup and recovery to recover mailbox stores quickly, with minimal data loss, in case

of unplanned downtime. Exchange’s traditional tape-based techniques suffer from

serious limitations, however. Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager software for

Microsoft Exchange alleviates this situation, offering rapid, simple backup and

recovery for Microsoft Exchange.

This paper discusses the advantages of using Protection Manager software, including

its integration of proven Hitachi replication technologies with application-aware

backup and recovery and its use of Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to

create consistent point-in-time images instantly, without interrupting end user access.

With Protection Manager software, administrators can back up Exchange data within

a storage system or across multiple storage systems.

In addition to covering these benefits, this paper provides a technical overview of

Protection Manager software, including an examination of the product’s functionality,

detailed descriptions of its integration with the Microsoft VSS service, and

performance examples of Exchange backup and recovery.

Contents

Overview ................................................................................................................................................ 1

Microsoft Exchange Data Storage Concepts ........................................................................................ 2

Transactional Consistency...................................................................................................................................................3

File Directories and LUNs.....................................................................................................................................................3

Performing Exchange Backups with Protection Manager Software.................................................. 5

Generation Name.....................................................................................................................................................................6

Backup Mode .............................................................................................................................................................................8

Source Storage Group ...........................................................................................................................................................8

How Protection Manager Works with VSS ...............................................................................................................10

Exchange Server Recovery .................................................................................................................. 12

Other Recovery Modes.......................................................................................................................................................15

Backup and Recovery Performance .................................................................................................... 15

System Configuration.........................................................................................................................................................15

Exchange Database Configuration ..............................................................................................................................17

Backup Performance ........................................................................................................................... 18

Recovery Performance .......................................................................................................................................................18

Summary .............................................................................................................................................. 19

Appendix A: References ...................................................................................................................... 20

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Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager Software for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

An Application Brief

By Koichiro Nakajima

Overview

E-mail is the primary communications channel for organizations of all sizes today. It is highly visible to employees, customers, and partners, alike, and downtime can have an enormous impact on productivity.

Many organizations rely on Microsoft Exchange for e-mail services, so Exchange backup and recovery is a mission-critical operation. If unplanned downtime occurs, Exchange administrators need to recover mailbox stores quickly, with minimal data loss. Traditional, tape-based techniques no longer meet service-level realities; with today’s shrinking backup windows, they cannot complete their task, and recovery is only as fast as what the tape technology can support. As Exchange data stores continue to grow, these limitations become more serious.

Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager software offers rapid, simple backup and recovery for Microsoft Exchange. Protection Manager software integrates proven Hitachi replication technologies with application-aware backup-and-recovery capabilities. It uses Microsoft-provided interfaces (Volume Shadow Copy Service, or VSS) to create consistent images in seconds for rapid disk-to-disk backups without interrupting end user access. The product encapsulates knowledge about Exchange and the storage-based replication software, simplifying backup-and-recovery operations and reducing the possibility of human error.

Using Protection Manager software, administrators can back up Exchange data within a storage system or across multiple storage systems. Disk-based backups shrink backup windows to only seconds while enabling rapid recovery. Protection Manager software can also be used as part of a three-tier, disk-to-disk-to-tape backup strategy through integration with third-party backup-and-recovery software.

Protection Manager software supports a wide range of Hitachi storage systems, including the following:

: : Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform

: : Hitachi TagmaStore Network Storage Controller

: : Hitachi TagmaStore Adaptable Modular Storage

: : Hitachi TagmaStore Workgroup Modular Storage

: : Hitachi Lightning 9900™ V Series enterprise storage

: : Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series modular storage

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In addition, Protection Manager software supports a range of proven replication technologies, including Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication software, Hitachi Copy-on-Write Snapshot software, Hitachi TrueCopy™ Remote Replication software, and Hitachi Universal Replicator software. Integration of Protection Manager software with Microsoft Cluster Server enables highly available Exchange operations during backup-and-recovery processes.

Protection Manager software shrinks backup windows and enables organizations to recover Exchange data quickly, with minimal data loss. It also protects organizations from human error in backup or recovery operations—reducing the risk of data loss or extended downtime.

This paper provides a technical overview of Hitachi HiCommand Protection Manager software for Microsoft Exchange. It describes the product functionality, offering detailed descriptions of the integration with the Microsoft VSS service and performance examples for Exchange backup and recovery.

Microsoft Exchange Data Storage Concepts

This section summarizes key Microsoft Exchange data storage concepts to provide a context for the following discussion of how Protection Manager software performs Exchange backup-and-recovery operations. For more information on Exchange storage and backup-and-recovery capabilities, see the references listed at the end of this paper.

The core data storage repository service for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 is the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service (store.exe), which hosts mailbox and public folders. Its primary responsibility is maintaining Exchange databases and managing transactions to give other services and messaging clients access to mailboxes and public folders. Exchange data is organized into logical components that rely on several physical entities, which are shown in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1. Exchange Data—Organized into Logical Components

Storage group A collection of mailbox stores and public folder stores that share a single set of transaction logs. A storage group typically constitutes a single unit for backup-and-recovery purposes. Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition supports as many as four storage groups on a single server.

Mailbox store (or private store database)

Databases containing mailboxes and message queues, holding data private to individuals. Exchange Server 2003 supports as many as five mailbox stores (or four, plus one public folder store) for each storage group.

Public folder store A database storing public folders, with data public to all users with mailboxes and appropriate permissions.

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Table 2. Exchange Physical Components—Relying on Several Physical Entities

Database files (.edb and .stm files)

Each Exchange database resides in two files: an ESE database file (.edb extension) and a streaming database file (.stm extension). For backup-and-recovery purposes, these pairs must always be written or restored together.

Transaction log (.log file)

A log of all changes to the database, grouped by “transactions” that must be committed all together or not at all. The transaction log is essential for maintaining database consistency and for recovering Exchange data from backups without data loss.

Checkpoint file (.chk file)

A file that determines which transactions require processing to move them from the transaction log files to the databases. It is updated when the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) writes a transaction to a database file on a disk. This update always points the checkpoint file to the last transaction transferred successfully to the database and provides a fast recovery mechanism.

Transactional Consistency

The Microsoft Exchange repository is a transactional database. When changes are written to the database, they are first recorded in a transaction log and then, over time, written to disk. Things that must occur together are grouped into a single transaction. Exchange does not allow just part of the transaction to occur. If the entire transaction cannot be completed successfully or if a system failure prevents the entire transaction from being committed, Exchange uses the transaction log to “roll back” the change, so that that database is always in a consistent state.

When recovering Exchange data, you can restore the most recent backup image and then replay transaction logs to bring the database to a current and consistent state. (This is referred to as a roll-forward recovery.) However, playing transaction logs takes time—the more you have to play, the longer the recovery. For this reason, it is helpful to maintain recent backup images.

File Directories and LUNs

For each storage group, Exchange Server creates a data directory containing the database and log files for the databases within that group.

For performance and availability purposes, you will typically store the database files and log files on separate LUNs. Log files experience sequential writes, whereas database files need high performance for random access, so performance is best when they are separate.

You also want the log files and database files on separate LUNs for backup-and-recovery purposes, because Protection Manager software operates on a LUN basis. There are several situations in which you might want to recover one set of files without the other. For example:

: : A point-in-time recovery overwrites the log files with backed-up files, restoring the database to a consistent image representing a point in the past.

: : A roll-forward recovery (to the time of failure) typically restores the database files without changing the production log files. The recovery process applies the logs to the restored image to bring the database up to the point of failure, without data loss.

For more information on best practices for Exchange storage design using Hitachi storage, see the paper “Best Practices for Hitachi Storage Supporting Microsoft Exchange,” available on the Hitachi Data Systems Web site (www.hds.com).

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HiCommand Protection Manager Software Provides an Application Optimized Storage™ Solution, Protection for Microsoft Exchange

Exchange backup and recovery can be complex in any situation. When you add specialized storage functions such as split mirrors, the complexity increases. Exchange or backup administrators typically understand what needs to be protected but may not be proficient with the storage system functionality. Storage administrators understand storage system configuration and functions but don’t necessarily understand which files map to which Exchange components or which are required for a recovery.

This gap between storage and Exchange administration makes the ongoing management of backups challenging and is hazardous during recovery operations, which are typically performed under pressure. Without a good understanding of both the database structure and the storage, it’s possible to make costly mistakes such as overwriting necessary transaction files or restoring from the wrong resource. Mistakes can result in delayed recovery or loss of data.

Protection Manager software bridges this gap with an Application Optimized Storage™ solution that couples advanced storage functionality with an understanding of the database components and their backup status. Protection Manager software discovers Exchange resources and their relationships, including:

: : Exchange instances

: : Storage groups within instances

: : Databases within storage groups

: : Physical files constituting databases

: : Mount points

: : Device objects

: : LDEVs

: : Copy pairs and pair names

Typically, Exchange administrators document and maintain these relationships by using scripts or spreadsheets—manual processes with little visibility to others in the organization and a significant potential for human error.

Protection Manager software maintains the resource map and the relationships in a repository called the Dictionary Map file, as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. Dictionary Map File

The Dictionary Map file maps resources and relationships.

Protection Manager software refers to this repository when performing backup-and-recovery operations. By maintaining up-to-date information about database structure and backup status, Protection Manager software reduces the potential for human error. This protection is particularly valuable during high-pressure recovery operations, when the administrator who typically maintains the Exchange environment may not be easily available.

Performing Exchange Backups with Protection Manager Software

This section illustrates how Protection Manager software simplifies and automates Exchange backup by stepping through a sample backup operation.

The Protection Manager console displays a list of the servers and applications it recognizes as backup targets, as shown in Figure 2.

(Protection Manager software also supports backup and recovery operations for NTFS file systems and Microsoft SQL Server databases.)

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Figure 2. Protection Manager Console

Use the Protection Manager console to select the file system or application to back up.

Once you select a resource and click the Backup button, Protection Manager software gives you the opportunity to specify the backup objects and method, as shown in Figure 3.

The backup options include the generation (where the backup will be written), the backup mode, and the backup sources.

Generation Name

The options for backup generation are:

: : Local. The backup image is saved on the same storage system.

: : Remote. The backup image is saved on a different storage system.

Whether you choose local or remote, you can select the backup generation name from the drop-down list. Protection Manager software can rotate between multiple backup generations. Selecting default from the list overwrites the oldest backup image; you can also select a specific secondary volume as a backup destination.

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Figure 3. Protection Manager Software Graphical Interface

Use the Protection Manager software graphical interface to enter backup options.

Hitachi Data Systems recommends configuring three secondary volumes for backups and rotating them in a round-robin fashion each day, as illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Rotating Three Secondary Volumes

ProductionVolume

SecondaryVolume – 1

SecondaryVolume – 0

SecondaryVolume – 2

Hitachi Data Systems recommends rotating backup generations.

This approach ensures that you always have a backup image that is no more than 24 hours old. It also speeds recovery by minimizing the number or size of transaction logs you need to replay on recovery.

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Backup Mode

Protection Manager software supports three backup modes, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Supported Backup Modes

Cold Taken while the Microsoft Exchange backup server is offline, a cold backup dismounts mailbox stores and then backs up the production volume to a secondary volume. Users cannot access the Exchange database during the backup. The total outage is relatively short for a disk-to-disk backup operation. A cold backup ensures a consistent backup image. This is a good option for Exchange Server 2000, which does not support VSS snapshots.

Online An online backup resynchronizes and splits mirrored volume pairs on the storage system, without first freezing I/O. The backup finishes very rapidly without dismounting the mailbox stores. However, the backup image can potentially contain incompletely written blocks (“torn writes”), which creates consistency problems. Microsoft developed VSS support in response to this problem; use online (non-VSS) backups with caution, and not at all if you can use VSS backups.

Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

This mode uses the VSS framework available with Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 to create a consistent online backup image. Protection Manager software works with Exchange to pause write I/Os from the database and purge the cache buffer before making the backup image, ensuring a consistent image without torn writes. Exchange remains online for end user access.

You can also choose to delete (truncate) the transaction log for a full backup or to leave the transaction log intact (a copy backup).

Source Storage Group

Protection Manager software lets you select an entire Exchange server or an individual storage group. The example shown in this paper performs a local VSS backup of a single storage group, using the log truncate option.

Protection Manager software prompts you to confirm the backup before it begins, as shown in Figure 5.

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Figure 5. Protection Manager Confirmation Screen

The backup confirmation screen of Protection Manager software prompts you to confirm the backup before it begins.

Click OK to begin the backup. Protection Manager software displays the backup progress screen, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Protection Manager Backup Progress Screen

Once you have chosen to begin the backup, view the backup progress screen to monitor developments.

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Backup Workflow

In the overall backup process, Protection Manager software:

1. Refers to the Dictionary Map file to identify the backup targets and secondary volumes

2. Starts a resynchronization of primary and secondary volumes (so they will be identical before the snapshot is taken)

3. Initializes the VSS session (described in the next section)

4. Collects the XML file defining the backup from the VSS session

5. Mounts the secondary volume and imports the snapshot and the XML file to the VSS import server

6. Invokes the Microsoft ESEUTIL utility to verify the database and transaction log files in the secondary volume

7. Truncates production transaction logs if the backup was successful and if the delete transaction log option was selected

8. Generates the backup catalog information and completes the entire backup process

Using VSS backups with Protection Manager software has no impact on cluster resources where the production server resides.

How Protection Manager Works with VSS

Microsoft VSS is the framework for creating consistent point-in-time copies of data (known as shadow copies or snapshots) on Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Before the introduction of the VSS technology, there was no way to be certain of producing a clean (uncorrupted and consistent) snapshot of a volume supporting an online Exchange instance. Online snapshots taken without VSS can contain “torn writes,” in which the system has not completely written a block of data to disk at the time of the snapshot.

VSS creates consistent snapshots by coordinating across applications, backup applications, and storage. Using VSS, an application flushes all partially committed data from memory and freezes write I/Os during the moment of the backup—creating consistent, high-fidelity backup images as of that point in time.

The major components of the VSS framework are shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Major VSS Framework Components

VSS coordinator This is the service in Windows Server 2003 that coordinates all snapshot components.

VSS requestor This application requests and initializes the creation of the volume shadow copy. Protection Manager software is the VSS requestor.

VSS writer This application component stores persistent information on volumes participating in shadow copy creation. Exchange Server 2003 is the VSS writer in this case.

Hardware provider This component creates and maintains the shadow copies. The Hitachi Command Control Interface (CCI) software for the RAID Manager includes a RAID Manager shadow copy provider module that serves this function, integrating VSS with the storage system–based replication functions.

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The overall VSS process is as follows:

1. Protection Manager software (the requestor) notifies the VSS coordinator of the pending snapshot; the coordinator determines the appropriate writers, gathers the metadata for the writers, and prepares for the shadow copy creation.

2. The VSS coordinator notifies Exchange Server to prepare for the shadow copy creation.

3. Exchange Server prepares the data by completing open transactions and/or flushing caches. It creates an XML description of the backup components and defines the recovery method. When the data is prepared, it notifies the VSS coordinator.

4. The coordinator contacts Protection Manager software, which initiates the “commit” shadow copy phase through the coordinator.

5. The VSS coordinator tells Exchange to quiesce the data and temporarily freeze all write I/Os for the several seconds required to create the shadow copy of the volumes. (Read I/O is still possible.) The VSS coordinator flushes the file system buffer and freezes the file system, ensuring that the file system metadata is consistent.

6. The VSS coordinator service tells the provider (the Hitachi RAID Manager shadow copy provider) to create the shadow copy; the provider splits the production volume and secondary volume (the shadow copy). This step occurs in less than 10 seconds.

7. Once the shadow copy is created, the VSS coordinator service thaws the file system. It releases Exchange from the temporary write I/O freeze; all queued writes are completed.

8. The coordinator queries Exchange to confirm that write I/Os were successfully held during the shadow copy creation. If they were not, the copy could be inconsistent. If that is the case, the shadow copy is deleted and the requestor is notified. Protection Manager software will either retry the process or notify the user, depending on a configurable retry setting. If it was successful, the process continues as described below.

9. The VSS coordinator creates an XML document file describing the snapshot set for exporting the transportable shadow copy.

10. On the VSS import server, the RAID Manager shadow copy provider unmasks the disk designated by the VSS coordinator to the LUN. (All the following steps take place on the VSS import server.)

11. The VSS coordinator discovers the new LUN and gives the location information of the shadow copy back to the requestor (Protection Manager software).

12. Protection Manager software mounts the shadow copy volume to the VSS maintenance server, invokes ESEUTIL, and verifies the backup image.

13. If ESEUTIL returns successfully, Protection Manager software completes the backup process and brings the shadow copy volume back to its normal secondary-volume state. Also, it performs log truncation at this stage if that is specified in the backup configuration. If ESEUTIL returns an error code, Protection Manager software retries the entire backup from the beginning. By default, it retries three times.

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Exchange Server Recovery

Protection Manager software can recover Exchange Server data at the storage group level and the database level, offering two recovery modes:

: : Point-in-time mode. This restores the database to the point of the last backup (by restoring transaction logs and not rolling forward)

: : Roll-forward mode. This restores the database to the point of failure (by replaying the production transaction logs)

Again, the best way to illustrate the simplicity of recovery is to step through a sample recovery session.

Using the Protection Manager console, an administrator would select the Backup Catalog View to initiate a recovery, as shown in Figure 7. This screen displays a list of backups.

Figure 7. Protection Manager Backup Catalog View

Select the Backup Catalog View to see a listing of available backups.

To see more detail about any specific backup, select the entry from the list and click Show Backup Detail Information.

With the backup selected, clicking the Restore button displays the Restore dialog box, as shown in Figure 8.

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Figure 8. Protection Manager Restore Dialog Box—Two Views

Enter restore options in the dialog box.

Enter restore options in the dialog box (database selection view).

Select the Source Storage Group, and choose whether to perform a roll-forward recovery. When you select the Source Storage Group, the Restore screen shows databases within the storage group and you can select only a certain database for recovery.

If you click OK, Protection Manager software displays a confirmation dialog box. Click OK again to begin the recovery. Protection Manager software then displays a progress screen, as shown in Figure 9.

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Figure 9. Protection Manager Restore Progress Dialog Box

When you click OK to begin recovery, the restore progress screen is displayed.

Note: Protection Manager software works with Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) to keep all cluster resources online during recovery, even the physical disk resources containing the storage group being restored, yet it prevents the Exchange virtual server from failing over to another node supporting Extended Maintenance Mode. Because of this integration, users can continue to access Exchange Server and use e-mail for the other storage groups not being restored.

Until recently, you had to bring physical disk resource offline after restore; otherwise, MSCS would initiate a failover. Now, with HDS assistance, Microsoft has introduced a new Extended Maintenance Mode which allows change SCSI reserve interval. This allows us to take a disk offline without MSCS noticing. Therefore, failover doesn’t occur.

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Figure 10. Protection Manager Cluster Administrator Screen

Cluster resources remain online during recovery.

Other Recovery Modes

Mailbox or e-mail recovery: Users sometimes mistakenly delete a mailbox or a single e-mail message. Hitachi Data Systems recommends that you use Exchange Server’s native recovery capabilities to address these problems. By default, Exchange retains deleted e-mails for up to seven days and mailboxes up to 30 days. See the Exchange Server documentation for details on how to restore e-mail messages and mailboxes.

Recovery storage group: Exchange Server 2003 offers a Recovery Storage Group feature. The Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services organization provides a solution service for restoring a Protection Manager software backup to a Recovery Storage Group, enabling single e-mail message recovery with Exmerge.

Backup and Recovery Performance

Hitachi Data Systems ran performance tests to illustrate the performance characteristics of Exchange backups using Protection Manager software. This section describes those results.

System Configuration

Protection Manager software supports most Hitachi storage systems using Hitachi storage system–based replication, such as Hitachi ShadowImage In-System Replication software.

To enable high-availability Exchange environments, Protection Manager software supports MSCS and Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager™ path manager software.

Hitachi Data Systems used the configuration shown in Table 5 to test Protection Manager backup-and-recovery performance.

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Table 5. Backup-and-Recovery Performance Testing Configuration

Hitachi HiCommand® Suite software

HiCommand Protection Manager software, V4.1, for Microsoft Exchange

Storage system Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform configured with:

: : LDEV Open V storage configuration

: : 400GB primary-volume LUN (8 x 50GB LUNs)

: : 1.2TB secondary-volume LUN (24 x 50GB LUNs)

Hitachi ShadowImage™ In-System Replication software : : 3 generation backups configured

The Exchange servers were configured in a two-node mutual standby cluster, with the characteristics outlined in Table 6.

Table 6. Exchange Server Testing Configuration

Hardware Dell PowerEdge 2650 with:

: : Intel Xeon 3.06GHz CPU

: : 3.75GB of RAM

: : Emulex L8000 host bus adapter

Installed software Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP1

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP1

Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager software, V4.1, for Microsoft Exchange

Hitachi RAID Manager shadow copy provider

RAID Manager Command Control Interface (CCI)

A third server functioned as the import/export server and was not part of the cluster, as shown in Figure 11. The hardware components were the same as the cluster nodes. The software components for the import/export server included Protection Manager software, RAID Manager CCI, and Hitachi RAID Manager shadow copy provider.

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Figure 11. Server Configuration for Protection Manager Software Backup-and-Recovery Performance Testing

Fibre Channel Switch

LAN

ExchangeNode 1

Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform

ExchangeNode 2

VSSImport Server

DomainController

The VSS Import Server was not part of the cluster in the server configuration for testing.

Exchange Database Configuration

The test environment was configured with two Exchange Server 2003 virtual servers (EVSs) on two nodes of a mutual standby cluster. Each EVS had two storage groups, with five databases in one and four databases plus a public folder in the other storage group. The user load was simulated by Microsoft LoadSim 2003 with the standard MMB3 profile, with simulated loads on the Exchange virtual server, as shown in Table 7.

Table 7. Simulated Loads on Exchange Virtual Server

Number of users Microsoft Exchange data size

1,000 100GB

2,000 200GB database

3,200 330GB database

The backup tests split out the time spent running ESEUTIL for database verification, which is by far the longest part of the backup operation. Performance was also compared with that of the native Microsoft Windows NT backup utility.

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Backup Performance

The total elapsed backup times for the various tests are shown in Table 8.

Table 8. Backup Performance Test Results

Elapsed time, in minutes: seconds 1,000 users 2,000 users 3,200 users

Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager software backup time

3:36 3:33 3:35

ESEUTIL verification time 29:31 44:43 70:51

Total elapsed time 33:27 48:16 74:26

You can see from Table 8 and Figure 12 that a large part of the backup time was the verification process with ESEUTIL. The Protection Manager software backup time was quite consistent across the different numbers of users and amount of data being backed up.

Figure 12. Backup Performance Test Time Results

0

500.00

1,000.00

1,500.00

2,000.00

2,500.00

3,000.00

3,500.00

4,000.00

4,500.00

1,000 Users 2,000 Users 3,200 Users

Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager Backup Time

ESEUTIL Verification Time

A large part of backup time is attributable to the ESEUTIL verification process.

In contrast, NT backup for 3,200 users took 11 hours and 54 minutes, even backing up to the local disk as its destination medium. Protection Manager software shrank the backup window by almost 10.5 hours, even accounting for the ESEUTIL elapsed time.

Recovery Performance

In many recovery situations you recover a single storage group at a time. Users of other storage groups can remain connected during the recovery operation, but there are situations in which you need to restore the entire Exchange store.

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For recovering a full, 3,200-user Exchange environment, Protection Manager software was significantly faster than the NT Backup utility, as shown in Table 9.

Table 9: Recovery Performance Test Results

Hitachi HiCommand® Protection Manager software roll-forward recovery

5 minutes, 40 seconds

Windows NT Backup recovery 209 minutes

The Protection Manager software recovery finishes in a fraction of the time of the NT Backup recovery.

These recoveries were performed from disk-based images. In a traditional, tape-based backup environment, the recovery would be much longer, because the tape library must find and load the appropriate tape, and reading data from tape is substantially slower than disk-based access.

Also, with a traditional backup infrastructure, combining a full backup image set with incremental or differential backups, the recovery scenario without Protection Manager software is likely to be much longer. One of the benefits of Protection Manager software is that it enables you to make frequent full backups for faster recovery.

Summary

Hitachi HiCommand Protection Manager software takes Microsoft Exchange backup and recovery to a new level of performance and accuracy.

: : Disk-to-disk backup capability offers very short backup windows and rapid recoveries. If only a single storage group is affected by a problem, users with mailboxes on other storage groups can continue business as usual during the recovery process.

: : Integration with the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service creates consistent point-in-time images of Exchange Server 2003 volumes. Because you can generate these images so quickly and efficiently, it is possible to maintain more backup images on disk, enabling very rapid recovery.

: : The easy-to-use user interface simplifies the processes of both backup and recovery—reducing the possibility of error even during crisis-driven recovery.

By speeding Exchange recovery (and therefore reducing downtime), Protection Manager software can deliver a rapid return on investment.

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Appendix A: References

: : Hitachi HiCommand Protection Manager software product manual

: : Hitachi RAID Manager shadow copy provider manual

: : Exchange Information Store Service Architecture http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/guides/E2k3TechRef/b5b94b4d-02d3-49e4-959f-b8bcf53d340b.mspx

: : Volume Shadow Copy Service Technical Reference http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/TechRef/7cb7e9f7-2090-4c88-8d14-270c749fddb5.mspx

: : How to Recover a Deleted Mailbox in Exchange http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;274343

: : Understanding Deleted Item Recovery http://support.microsoft.com/kb/228934/

: : Best Practices for Hitachi Storage Supporting Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 http://www.hds.com/pdf/wp_195_exchange_best_practices.pdf

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The material in this manual is restricted for use within Hitachi Data Systems. Copies may be made, in whole or in part, to support the restricted usage of this material as described above and in accordance with contractual requirements, provided that this copyright notice is included in its entirety.

Hitachi Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. The Hitachi Data Systems logotype is a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. HiCommand is a registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd.

TagmaStore, Dynamic Link Manager, TrueCopy, ShadowImage, Lightning 9900, Thunder 9500, and Application Optimized Storage are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation.

All other company names are, or may be, trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

Notice: This document is for informational purposes only, and does not set forth any warranty, express or implied, concerning any equipment or service offered or to be offered by Hitachi Data Systems. This document describes some capabilities that are conditioned on a maintenance contract with Hitachi Data Systems being in effect, and that may be configuration-dependent, and features that may not be currently available. Contact your local Hitachi Data Systems sales office for information on feature and product availability.

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©2005, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

WHP-209-00 December 2005