* But Were Afraid to Ask
Part 2 of this series (Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here) breaks down the events that take place during the backup of a mounted and active replicated database in an Exc...
Updated Feb 05, 2020
Version 3.0
Blog Post
@Arif and Rahul, thanks!
@Michael, the freeze duration is discussed briefly in part 1, but how that generally works is like this. The Exchange Writer freezes I/O for a database and notifies VSS of the freeze. VSS then has 60 seconds to get a snapshot of the disk(s) where the data
resides before a timeout is issued. If the snapshots aren't ready in that time an abort is issued, and the Exchange Writer thaws the database. Usually the snapshots are prepared very quickly, so the database is not frozen for even close to the full time
allowed.
As for your question about identifying specific mailbox databases for backup, it depends on the requestor application you're using. Diskshadow can request snapshots, but it won't pull data out of them once they're created, something else needs to do that.
That being said, to single out one database out of many you can use a "writer verify" statement with just the GUID of that database like this:
writer verify "Microsoft Exchange Writer:Microsoft Exchange ServerMicrosoft Information Store<ServerName><DatabaseGUID>"
Your script also needs an "add volume" statement for each volume with database data you need snapshots of:
add volume <DatabaseDiskVolume> alias <DatabaseDiskVolumeAlias>
Format the rest of the script accordingly and Diskshadow will only snapshot the disk(s) for the database you want. You can then robocopy out the data if you expose the snapshot(s). Here's our doc on setting up the complete script, there are many 3rd party
ones available as well:
Diskshadow
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772172(v=ws.10)