I have taken over in a new role and found that while backups were being conducted on a regular basis, the backup solution was not VSS aware and almost 1TB of log files had accrued since Exchange was installed in 2011!
I have implemented the use of the Windows Server Backup utility on the Windows 2008 R2 server that hosts Exchange 2010.
After verifying that I had achieved consistency within the mail databases, I scheduled a Full VSS Backup to run every night to a series of externally attached USB hard drives, and was happy to see that each days Exchange log files are now being flushed after each back up.
However, when reviewing the backup reports within Windows Server backup utility, I note that each backup following the initial FULL backup to each hard drive is referred to as Incremental? I was under the impression that in specifying a VSS FULL Backup, any existing backup found within the WindowsImageBackup folder on the backup media would be overwritten in it's entirety but it seems that the existing Full backup is instead being 'modified' by each subsequent backup?
Also, the collective size of the .vhd files created on the backup media is significantly larger than the space shown within Windows Explorer as 'used' on each of the volumes backed up?
Could someone please explain these apparent anomalies? - Thanks
