Hi I use ntbackup to backup my E12 Server . Everything worked fine for about two months. But at once log files of three Storage Groups were not deleted anymore!I am doingfull backups every day. Only three of six Storage Groupsare concerned. Now my disk space is running out of space!!! Any suggestions? Regards Peter

are you sure that you are taking Online Backup for Exchange ? not File Based Backup ? cause if the backup finished successfully for E2KX, alldata inLog Files will be committed to their Database and all Log File will be deleted. can you please post here the last backup report for your Exchange Server ? Regards Alaa Al-Ankar

any info in the application log? When backup is complete OK, it will be an entry saying so. if it fails if will be an entry saysing so

I have to say that this is a CCR environnment. Absolutly no error or warning in the application log. That's all I can see: ***************************************** 8018 ntbackup - Beginn Operation8000 ntbackup - Beginn Backup of ...StorageGroup...210 ESE - MSExchangeIS (4860) SG1: A full backup is starting.220 ESE - Beginning the backup of the file ...edb (size 90 Mb). 907 ESE BACKUP - Information Store (4860) Backup data transfer method is shared memory (64kb). 221 ESE - MSExchangeIS (4860) SG1: Ending the backup of the file ...edb. 223 ESE - MSExchangeIS (4860) SG1: Starting the backup of log files (range E:\Logfiles\SG1\E020000427A.log - E:\Logfiles\SG1\E020000428C.log)8001 ntbackup - End Backup of ...SG1' The operation was successfully completed.'213 ESE - MSExchangeIS (4860) SG1: The backup procedure has been successfully completed. 8019 ntbackup - End Operation: The operation was successfully completed. 8008 ntbackup - Begin Verify of '....\Microsoft Information Store\SG1'8009 ntbackup - End Verify of '..\Microsoft Information Store\SG1' 'The operation was successfully completed.' ***************************************** I found, that on the passive node the logfiles were ok. After moving resources to the passive node and back again, everything was ok.Ntbackup was also able to delete the transactionlogs again. But no idea why that happend. Thanks and regards Peter

If you do backup of a CCR environment then you must use a VSS cabable backup software. NTBackup has no VSS writer for Exchange. have a look at "MS Data protection Manager ver2", its still in Beta but it performs very good with Exchange. http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dpm/default.mspx

well, i've never faced such problem , i've implemented CCR so many times in LAB and one in production environment, and alwasy use NTbackup, and the Log Files were always deleted from the passive node and replicate the changes back to Active Node , where Transaction nodes from Active are deleted as well. VSS is available in Windows Server 2003, and whenever i am taking backup from NTBackup, it always uses VSS Technology build in Windows Server 2003 - R2. can you please confirm that the Volume Shadow Copy Service under your exchange server is started ? can you please check if you have any error messages loged under Application Log in event viewer for VSS ? i am currently building another CCR Lab, and i will test this by my self, i am sure that you can take a backup using NTBackup, and all Trans Logs will be comminted to Database and then be deleted. please update us. Regards Alaa

Do you avoid the online maintenance schedule? The default schedule is run daily from 1:00 ~ 5:00AM

Here's a great link to "Backup Process Used with Clustered Exchange Server 2003 Servers at Microsoft". It contains ntbackup scripts that use advanced parameters for increasing the disk write speed for online diskbackups and was extremly helpful for configuring proper cluster backup. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735157.aspx For ntbackup, make sure you set the/m parameter to "normal" or "incremental" to purge the logs. Differential DOES NOT purge transactionlogs. Regards.

You are running the backup with NTBACKUP (which is not VSS aware...and not file system VSS, exchange VSS, 2 different VSS's...very bad naming) on the ACTIVE node of the CCR cluster? That's its only supported config.

I'm basically experiencing the same scenario. I have a CCR configuration and currently have daily tasks (onthe Active node)configured to run an Incremental backup on the logs. However, we recently had to failover to the Passive node and I noticed that the Active node scheduled backups were still running. They were being reported as successful in Event Viewer, and I checked all log locations on both servers and they are being deleted/synchronized properly, which is also confirmed by the Healthy copy status in the Console. So if NTbackup doesn't support VSS, how is this working? Edit: Thinking this over... does this mean the "Active" node can successfully perform NTBackups even though it's currently not active? So this works, but if i tried doing the reverse on the Passive it would fail?

this is the magic in CCR dude you can perform Backup from passive node not the active, and leave the active node with full performance to handle client request, and when backup finished from passive node, the logs will be deleted from passive node and from active node as well.

Right, but everyone is saying that NTBackup doesn't support VSS. My NTBackup scripts are currently running properly from the Active server but everything is currently running off of the Passive (we had to failover due to a hardware problem that has yet to be resolved). Edit: Sorry I registered a new personal account. Mattzvvv was my old account that I commented with above