Topic Last Modified: 2007-01-08

The Microsoft® Exchange Server Analyzer Tool queries each mailbox store to determine the date and time of the last full backup. The Exchange Server Analyzer also queries the Active Directory® directory service to determine the number of users with mailboxes in each mailbox store. The Exchange Server Analyzer displays a warning if both of the following conditions exist:

The mailbox store is a database for storing mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007. A mailbox store is made up of a rich-text (.edb) file and a streaming native Internet content (.stm) file. Although there are two files, the .edb and .stm files, they represent two halves of a single database, instead of two distinct databases.

The mailbox store and public folder store data in your Exchange Server databases and transaction log files are the most important data to back up in your Exchange Server organization. You can use an Exchange Server database backup to restore a damaged mailbox to a functioning server that is running Exchange Server. You can also use Exchange Server database backups to restore your Exchange Server databases to a different server.

As a best practice, you should perform a full backup of your database files and transaction logs every day. After completion of a full backup of a storage group, the committed transaction log files on the Exchange Server databases are deleted from the server. A full backup provides the advantage of speed in a recovery scenario, because you need only one tape set to restore all data.

Note:
It is a best practice to keep transaction log files on a dedicated disk separate from the database files. This provides fault tolerance in case the database disk is destroyed, and in some cases, improves database performance.
Important:
You must have the required permissions or rights assigned to the user account that you are logged into when you try to back up or restore files and folders. To create Exchange Server backups, you must have domain level backup operator rights. To create backups of your Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, you must have, at a minimum, local backup operator rights.

The backup strategy that you choose for your Exchange Server data depends on the size of the stores, the speed of backup software and hardware, hardware capacity, and time requirements.

For more information about backup strategies and disaster recovery operations, see: