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SnapCenter Software 4.8
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Back up Exchange databases

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If a database is not part of any resource group, you can back up the database or Database Availability Group from the Resources page.

What you will need

  • You must have created a backup policy.

  • You must have assigned the aggregate that is being used by the backup operation to the SVM used by the database.

  • If you want to back up a resource that has a SnapMirror relationship with a secondary storage, the role assigned to the storage user should include the “snapmirror all” privilege. However, if you are using the “vsadmin” role, then the “snapmirror all” privilege is not required.

  • If you want to perform backup of a Database or a Database Availability Group which has active/passive database copy on a NetApp and non-NetApp storage, and you have selected Back up active copies or Back up copies on servers to be selected during backup job creation time option in the policy, then the backup jobs will go in to warning state. The backup will succeed for active/passive database copy on NetApp storage and backup will fail for active/passive database copy on non-NetApp storage.

    Best Practice: Do not run backups of active and passive databases at the same time. A race condition can occur and one of the backups might fail.

Steps

  1. In the left navigation pane, click Resources, and then select the Microsoft Exchange Server plug-in from the list.

  2. In the Resources page, select either Database, or Database Availability Group from the View list.

    In the Resources page, the not supported icon icon indicates that the database is on non-NetApp storage.

    Note In a DAG, If an active database copy is on a non-NetApp storage and at least one passive database copy resides on a NetApp storage, then you can protect the database.

    Click filter icon, and then select the host name and the database type to filter the resources. You can then click filter icon to close the filter pane.

    • If you want to back up a database, click on the database name.

      1. If the Topology view is displayed, click Protect.

      2. If the Database - Protect Resource wizard is displayed, continue to Step 3.

    • If you want to back up a Database Availability Group, click on the Database Availability Group name.

  3. If you want to specify a custom Snapshot copy name, in the Resources page, select the Use custom name format for Snapshot copy check box, and then enter a custom name format that you want to use for the Snapshot copy name.

    For example, customtext_policy_hostname or resource_hostname. By default, a timestamp is appended to the Snapshot copy name.

  4. In the Policies page, perform the following steps:

    1. Select one or more policies from the drop-down list.

      Note You can also create a policy by clicking add policy from resource groups.
      Note If a policy contains the Back up copies on servers to be selected at backup job creation time option, a server selection option is displayed to select one or more servers. The server selection option will list only the server where the selected database is on a NetApp storage.

    In the Configure schedules for selected policies section, the selected policies are listed.

    1. Click add policy from resource group in the Configure Schedules column for the policy for which you want to configure a schedule.

    2. In the Add schedules for policy policy_name window, configure the schedule, and then click OK.

      Where, policy_name is the name of the policy that you have selected.

      The configured schedules are listed in the Applied Schedules column.

  5. In the Notification page, from the Email preference drop-down list, select the scenarios in which you want to send the emails.

    You must also specify the sender and receiver email addresses, and the subject of the email. If you want to attach the report of the backup operation performed on the resource, select Attach Job Report.

    Note For email notification, you must have specified the SMTP server details using the either the GUI or the PowerShell command Set-SmSmtpServer.

  6. Review the summary, and then click Finish.

    The database topology page is displayed.

  7. Click Back up Now.

  8. In the Backup page, perform the following steps:

    1. If you have applied multiple policies to the resource, from the Policy drop-down list, select the policy that you want to use for backup.

      If the policy selected for the on-demand backup is associated with a backup schedule, the on-demand backups will be retained based on the retention settings specified for the schedule type.

    2. Click Backup.

  9. Monitor the backup's progress by double-clicking the job in the Activity pane at the bottom of the page to display the Job Details page.

    • In MetroCluster configurations, SnapCenter might not be able to detect a protection relationship after a failover.

      For information, see: Unable to detect SnapMirror or SnapVault relationship after MetroCluster failover

    • If you are backing up application data on VMDKs and the Java heap size for the SnapCenter Plug-in for VMware vSphere is not large enough, the backup might fail.

      To increase the Java heap size, locate the script file /opt/netapp/init_scripts/scvservice. In that script, the do_start method command starts the SnapCenter VMware plug-in service. Update that command to the following: Java -jar -Xmx8192M -Xms4096M