Exchange 2007 DB backup and restore

peter212693 · 30 Jul 2015 at 23:10

Hi all,

We are planning a HDD upgrade on a clients Exchange 2007 server. Currently has 6x300GB drives in a RAID 1+0 and we are going to swap all 6 for 900GB drives. Now this will obviously kill the array.

Now the exchange is installed on the C: drive which is on its own array which wont be touched but he 3 databases and log files are on the array we will be swapping. Now we use Symantec system recovery as one backup solution taking a snapshot of the who system weekly (also use backup exec for daily tape backups). So I was thinking extra snap shot with system recovery of the array drop the new drives in, create the new array and restore the image of the database drive. Has anyone done a similar task and recommend a better way?

I was hoping to configure the new array in the server and then move all 3 databases from within the exchange console but there is not enough space in the server for all the new drives before removing all the 300GB's.

Cheers

peter212693 · 11 Aug 2015 at 22:10

Thanks all,

All drive bays are full in the server so can add anymore without removing any. The controller is a P400 SmartArray controller and does support hot swapping the drives.

With the swap one drive at a time method. Once all the drives are swapped will the drive show un-allocated disk space on the drive which I can just expand to within windows? It does sound risky but too easy

peter212693 · 12 Aug 2015 at 20:32

Tried the swapping one drive at a time method today on one of our test servers out of curiosity and it worked an absolute dream.

Had 4 x 72GB drives in a RAID 1+0 running a 200 user DC. Swapped all 4 drives letting it rebuild between each and expanded the logical drive all withing 90 minutes!

peter212693 · 13 Aug 2015 at 07:19

Yea we would have a backup from the night before. Not sure if we will be going down that route yet just wanted to test it out.