Exchange 2007 Server Roles and Backup Techniques

Mailbox server role

• Mailbox servers contain mailboxes and public folders and are therefore the most important to your backup.
• You can use any Exchange-aware backup application to back up the Information Stores. Search information can't be backed up; you must rebuild it.

Hub Transport server role

• Backing up a Hub Transport server isn't usually critical.
• If a Hub Transport server crashes, you can sometimes recover messages from the queue using the same techniques that you would use to recover any other Exchange database.
• You can rebuild a Hub Transport server's configuration after a crash by using the following command:

Setup /m:RecoverServer

Edge Transport server role

• It isn't usually necessary to back up an Edge Transport server.
• Unless you have made custom changes to an Edge Transport server, you don't need to back up the configuration data because it's easily replaceable.

Client Access server role

• The best way to back up a Client Access server is to perform a file-level backup that includes a backup of the system state.

Unified Messaging role

• The vast majority of the configuration data associated with a Unified Messaging server is stored in Active Directory (AD).
• If you've created custom auto-attendant or custom voice prompts, you'll need to back them up or you'll lose them. The same goes for any auto-generated grammar file containing the table names for the auto attendant.

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