NTBackup for Server 2008 with Exchange

As the exploding popularity of our “Running NtBackup under Windows 7” would suggest, the emergence of our latest and greatest operating systems has also left a few holes that Microsoft has yet to plug.  As our readers have seen from our first article, it is very easy to get NtBackup running under windows 7, but more and more people are also realizing that there is a significant need for this on their Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 boxes that are running exchange.

Currently, Microsoft does not include any product that adequately backs up exchange server on these platforms. The biggest issue with all of the schemes is the fact that logs are not cleared and these servers end up with a lot of wasted space from these.

Honestly, I don’t know when Microsoft plans on addressing this issue officially, but given the screaming we have heard, I would hope that it is soon.

Anyway, to get NTBackup working for exchange in this scenario is almost identical to our Windows 7 tutorial with a couple of small exceptions.

The process goes like this:

Copying the following binaries from a server 2003 install (C:\Windows\System32\) to a new location such as (C:\Program Files\NTBackup\):

• ntbackup.exe
• ntmsapi.dll
• vssapi.dll

Then, install the removable storage manager in server 2008 which can be found under the features menu in server manager.

Finally, go into an older server and copy esebcli2.dll from your server (C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Bin) and put it into your new location which in our case would be (C:\Program Files\NTBackup\):

Then, change the esebcli2 reg key from (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\DLLPaths)

C:\Program Files\Micrsoft\Exchange Server\Bin\esebcli2.dll

to

C:\Program Files\NTBackup\esebcli2.dll.

Now go ahead and set up your exchange backup as a scheduled task just as you would have done in the past.

Please remember that this is more of a band-aid solution  and is totally unsupported by Microsoft. This will not work with tape drives, and it is very possible that future Microsoft service packs could break this functionality.  With that being said, it has been very solid in all of our testing thus far.

Cheers!