C/D/H Talks Tech

Author:

Eric Inch

I enjoy learning, using and helping others through technology. This is my second year with C/D/H after many years of consulting for numerous small and mid-sized companies. I enjoy challenging projects and continual improvement in all areas. Most recently, I have been working to help grow the virtualization practice at C/D/H and hopefully add that area to the already impressive expertise in infrastructure consulting at C/D/H.

When I’m not working, I enjoy spending time with my family. I have two little girls who keep me extremely busy but are always the highlight of my day.

For a more in-depth bio and a list of my areas of expertise, please visit http://www.cdh.com.

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Articles by Eric Inch

I have been working quite a bit recently with Microsoft’s backup solution, System Center Data Protection Manager, and wanted to share the process for recovering a mailbox from an Exchange Server 2007 Information Store.

Data Protection Manager (DPM) is a near continuous backup solution that is ideal for companies that run mostly Microsoft technologies. The protected servers in your environment will have a DPM agent installed that will monitor changes to data on the server and communicate back to the DPM Server on a defined interval to synchronize the changes back. DPM allows you to schedule the synchronization up to every 15 minutes. This is a big improvement over traditional backup solutions that backup every 24 hours.

In regards to Microsoft Exchange, DPM allows you to backup your information stores every 15 minutes and offers a couple different methods for recovering data. The one drawback to the recovery process in DPM are the steps required to restore a mailbox – more expensive backup solutions, like CommVault,  provide granular restore of a single email. In the most common method of DPM restore for Exchange, you need to create a Recovery Storage Group, restore the information store containing the data to be restored to the Recovery Group, and then either add the recovered data to the user’s mailbox as a new folder or merge the contents into the mailbox. The process for Exchange recovery in DPM is as follows:

Create Recovery Storage Group

• 1. Select Database Recovery Management from Exchange toolbox (Do this from active cluster node)
• 2. Select a name for the task and verify server information is correct
• 3. Select Create a recovery storage group
• 4. Choose the storage group to link the recovery storage group to and select Next
• 5. Name the storage group and verify location of files. Select Create the recovery storage group

Restore Mailbox to Recovery Store with Data Protection Manager

• 1. Choose Recovery from the main selection bar
• 2. Under Data on Disk and Tapes, expand the Exchange cluster name
• 3. Select the storage group that has the mailbox you want to recover
• 4. Select a mailbox and a recovery point from the storage group
• 5. Right-click and choose Recover
• 6. Select Recover mailbox to an Exchange server database
• 7. Configure destination for recovered data
• a. In the Exchange server box, select Browse and choose the Exchange Mailbox Cluster
• b. Enter the name of the storage group you created and the name of the recovery database
• 8. Finish the recovery wizard

Merge or Add Recovered Data to User Mailbox

• 1. Go back into Database Recovery Management
• 2. Under Manage Recovery Storage Group, select Mount or dismount database in the recovery storage group
• 3. Select the recovery database and choose mount
• 4. In the task center, select Merge or copy mailbox contents
• 5. With the mounted database selected, select Gather merge information
• 6. Perform pre-merge tasks
• 7. The matching mailbox should be selected.
• 8. Perform merge action

To add recovered data as a folder within the current user mailbox, run the following Powershell script:

Restore-Mailbox -RSGMailbox ”MailboxName” -RSGDatabase “Recovery Storage Group\Mailbox Database” -identity “UserMailbox” -TargetFolder “FolderName”

Example:

Restore-Mailbox -RSGMailbox ”Eric J. Inch” -RSGDatabase “Recovery Storage Group\Mailbox Database” -identity “Eric J. Inch” -TargetFolder “FolderName”

Delete Recovery Storage Group

• 1. Under Manage Recovery Storage Group select Mount or dismount database in the recovery storage group
• 2. Choose the database and select dismount
• 3. Select Remove the recovery storage group
• 4. With the database listed as dismounted, choose remove