Understanding the value of why enterprises need to make sure their backups are in place has been a subject we have addressed many times here. We have covered major disasters gone right and wrong, ransomware, and Exchange online. Today we are going to dive into Microsoft Exchange on-premises, which can be an interesting topic. When designed and deployed correctly, some may argue that backups aren’t needed at all.
Let’s take a look!
Microsoft has really done a great job throughout its many versions of Exchange to improve resiliency in the product. The ability to run multiple copies of your databases and a lagged copy of the data, plus the ability to change the deleted item retention for your mailboxes to whatever you need to recover individual messages, leaves many organizations with a tough question to answer: Do I still need to back up my on-premises Exchange databases and mailboxes? Many organizations choose not to back up their on-premises Exchange environments. With that being said, most still do, and here’s why.
As an administrator of Exchange on-premises for many years, and after seeing the unforeseeable, I’ve learned that no matter how much resiliency I can build into my Exchange environment, you will still find me backing up Microsoft Exchange. Here are two real world examples that I experienced:
The way I look at having backups for Exchange On-premises is that some of the decision will come from the corporate culture you work in, and essentially the company’s tolerance for failure.
Most organizations will want their data back no matter what. In both of the unexpected situations described above, the data needed to be able to be recovered no matter what, and I was glad I had the backups to ensure that the data could be recovered.