Backing up and restoring shared disk storage

Global Mailbox configuration files and the payloads that are contained in the mailboxes are stored on the shared disk stores. The disk is active because files are uploaded and deleted rapidly from the system.

About this task

Back up the shared disk regularly. The frequency of backups is determined by your Recovery Point Objective (RPO). The RPO is the maximum time period in which data can be lost during a failure.

Procedure

To back up and restore a shared disk, complete the following steps:

  1. Back up the configuration files and the mailbox payloads in the following directories:
    • Configuration files: config
    • Payload files: 1st_provisioned_* and global_mbx_*

    Payloads are replicated from one data center to another. If a file is not replicated to the data center that had a failed disk, it is replicated after the disk is brought back online. If the failed disk had the only copy of a file because it was not replicated yet, it might be lost if it was received in the RPO window. Payloads that are uploaded between the last backup and the restoration are lost. For more information about restoring lost files, see Processing files in the surviving data center.

  2. Restore files to the shared disk from the backup location.