Exchange servers must have a strong backup and recovery plan in place because disaster can occur at any time. We recommend taking a proactive approach to cybersecurity in Miami because one incident is all it takes to:
- Lose revenue
- Impact crucial internal operations
- Damage to the business’s reputation
Server admins must have a disaster plan in place to help streamline recovery and avoid systematic business failures.
Backup and Recovery Best Practices for an Exchange Server
Microsoft itself states that Exchange Servers have “native data protection,” but as an admin, you know that if something does go wrong, business stakeholders will look to you for answers. With this in mind, Microsoft does provide a plugin that helps with the backup process called “WSBExchange.exe.”
You'll want to familiarize yourself with the backup plugin, but you should still follow these best practices:
- Minimize large mailbox sizes. Databases for large mailboxes can fail, causing the mailbox and any in the database to fail a restoration. You benefit from having numerous small mailboxes set up on multiple databases. Why? If your recovery fails, spreading the recovery across many databases will allow for more data to be restored.
- Limit yourself to one backup application to avoid log-file issues. If you use multiple backup solutions, it can lead to issues during the replay process.
- Always verify a backup. You can do this using the Get-MailboxDatabase –Server function and checking the backup status of the snapshot.
Third-party software offers robust backup solutions that allow for scheduled backups and the ability to verify backups.
Single Item Recovery
Exchange server database corruption can lead to significant issues. One of the concerns is the ability to restore single items, which is possible without a traditional backup. The issue is that the setting for this recovery is not enabled by default.
Server admins must change the settings to allow for:
- Single item recovery
- Per-mailbox basis
Admins must set the single item recovery to each mailbox. If the mailbox has been deleted or an item that needs to be recovered was deleted prior to the setting change, it will be impossible to perform the action.
You can set a retention period for each mailbox, and you’ll need to determine the adequate duration for your organization.
Exchange Server does allow for traditional backup methods, and it’s crucial for a recovery database to be in place for admins to be able to restore their mailbox data when necessary. The items can then be extracted from this database when, or if, needed in the future.
Admins should put processes and procedures in place that allow for an error-proof backup and recovery system to be in place. If you don’t have systems in place that are followed by current and future admins, it can lead to issues with recovery in the future.
If you need help with backup and recovery basics for your exchange server, we can help. Our cybersecurity company in Miami can help put the right systems in place to ensure that if a server goes down, restoration is fast and efficient.