our exchange box is backed up by arcserve 11.

which way is better to back up exchange itself? at db level, or brick level?

also does anyone have any views/experience on online-incremental backups during the day of just the exchange dbs.. eg at 9, 12 and 3..

again.. is brick level or db level better?

ta

It depends on what you are wanting to use the backups for.

If you need to rebuild a failed server then it's easier to have the full message store backed up as one item.

If you want to recover individual mailboxes separately onto a recovery store then it saves time if you back them up separately.

Personally I don't worry too much about incremental backups as there is going to be a locally held copy of the emails on individual PCs should something happen during the day

we do a full db backup every night + brick level every night too for about 180 accounts

We only do full db backups, currently running at more than 500 accounts. Would just take to long to complete a brick level one. Also use Arcserve 11 with exchange 5.5

yes brick level takes ages but unless you want to restore an entire exchange server to get a mailbox back its the only way

it helps if you use a fast drive i use an lto3 for mine