Deleting Exchange Server backups

You can remove an Exchange Server backup that you created with the VSS backup method. Use this procedure only for deletions that are outside the scope of your standard policy management deletions.

Typically, backups are deleted automatically based on user-defined policy management settings. This procedure is necessary only if you must delete backups that are outside the scope of IBM Storage Protect Snapshot policy definitions.

If you back up Exchange Server Database Availability Group (DAG) databases to IBM Storage Protect, you can delete the database backup from the DAG member to a local shadow volume only from the Exchange Server on which the backup is created.

If you delete a remotely-mounted backup, the snapshots and the relationship between the source and target volumes on the storage device are also deleted. However, the target volume that is imported and mounted might continue to exist. In addition, the target volume might not be available to the server where the remote mount occurred. The operations to the target volume depend on the VSS hardware provider and the storage device implementation.

After the maximum number of remotely-mounted backup versions or the maximum number of days to retain a backup is exceeded, the associated backup is expired and deleted.

1. Start Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
2. Click Recover Data in the welcome page of MMC.
3. On the Recover tab for the Exchange Server instance, select View: Database Restore. In the Results pane, browse to and select one or more database backups to delete.
4. In the Actions pane, click Delete Backup.
   While a backup is being deleted, two tasks are displayed in the task window to show that the deletion is in progress, and that the view is being refreshed.