Backing up Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Exchange is a VSS aware application from MS Exchange 2003 and onwards. As with SQL Server, MS Exchange can store transaction logs and data files on various volume, particularly when it comes to storage groups. To ensure that MS Exchange is correctly backed up you will need to include all the volumes that are employed.

MS Exchange has it's own VSS style backup utility which can be used to backup the database state. If this is being used you will need to exclude the MS Exchange VSS Writer from a Macrium Reflect backup so that a clash does not occur. This is done by adding a registry key to exclude VSS writers.:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macrium\Reflect\ExcludedWriters

Name: Can be anything you like but probably best if you kept it pertinent, e.e.: MSExchange

Value: {76fe1ac4-15f7-4bcd-987e-8e1acb462fb7}

Should you want Macrium Reflect to backup MS Exchange for you then you should disable the backup utility in MS Exchange.