Backup and Restore Concepts
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 includes storage architecture changes and new technologies, such as Database Mobility, to improve mailbox reliability and availability. By using the Microsoft Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) with Exchange 2010, backup and restore applications can further increase data availability and recoverability while having a minimal performance impact on your active mailbox databases.
This section describes Exchange and Windows features that are important for creating Exchange-compatible VSS-based backup and restore applications. It does not provide complete information about planning, configuring, or maintaining Exchange storage solutions. For more information about how to implement and administer Exchange 2010, see the Exchange Server TechCenter.
To create backup and restore applications, you need to be familiar with standard backup and restore–related concepts, such as the difference between full, copy, differential, and incremental backups and how they are used. If you plan to create backup, restore, and recovery applications that are compatible with Exchange 2010, we recommend that you become familiar with the concepts described in this section.