 Proper protection of Microsoft Exchange data through regular backup practices is critical for all organizations today. In choosing to use disk-based technologies in the backup environment, Exchange administrators can realize the benefits of performance and reliability for both backup and restore functions.  For environments where the Exchange users rely on the messaging system to regularly share content (attachments) and organize their information (public folders) it is not unusual to accumulate growing amounts of data – often with a high degree of redundancy. Some of the redundant data is handled within Exchange through built in single instance storage techniques. However, this does not help if mail attachments are saved first or copy and pasted into new message threads. The ability to exploit data deduplication technology on the backup data allows organizations to keep more data for longer periods of time without incurring the linear cost of storage associated with standard disk or tape solutions that do not deduplicate the data.
<p align="left"><!--more-->In an organization, Exchange backups do not happen in a vacuum. When the Exchange backup sets are sent to the same deduplication storage systems that are holding the backups of other Windows based user files, the overall deduplication effects can often be compounded. This is partly due to the fact that much of the data moving through Exchange is usually similar to the data that exists or is being saved on the users’ systems.</p>
<p align="left">When combined with Exchange-aware backup applications, Data Domain deduplication storage systems provide an excellent platform for the backup and restore of Exchange environments.  By following some simple guidelines, Exchange administrators can make the backup and restore process simple and effective at the same time leveraging the capabilities of the Data Domain deduplication storage systems.  By avoiding practices that can alter the original data set (e.g., compression, encryption, defragmentation) and by relaxing the practices that try to minimize the amount of data handled (e.g., deleted items, incremental) it is possible to leverage the disk based solutions from Data Domain without sacrificing performance or capacity considerations.</p>