Holy NTBACKUP

...and the winner is: nobody - at the moment - to be specific: it's Tue 10:00 PM. After struggling the whole day with the exchange stores with NO success(the stores don't replay all the logfiles - they end up with a dbtime error at some point...) we decided to move all the mailboxes to new stores, make a full backup and then monitor the system if the error happens again. Even a Call(still open) to MS directly brought no success. Then we decided to analyze the backup strategy, especially the backup solution... I swear: If they had used NTBACKUP, the restore would have been as easy as 1,2,3...(a tribute to Jackson 5!). That's what I've experienced so many times in the past: If you use a 3rd Party solution for your exchange backup, thoroughly test it - exclamation mark. And testing means not to simply backup and restore a database. Testing means taking your database(s) under stress and initiating an online backup during the stress test. Then restore the database and see if all logfiles are correctly replayed! If not - kick it(the solution) out, or ask the ISV to provide a functioning release of the product. Or, simply use NTBACKUP(don't forget to test it anyway!) to backup your exchange databases to a file. Then backup this file to tape. This multi-tier approach enables you to restore the database from disk(which is faster than the tape) and also has the advantage of assuring that the databases are backuped and restored "the Microsoft way" (meaning that the correct API-Calls are made).