Summary
This article describes the procedure needed to perform an Exchange 2003/2007 restore to a Recovery Storage Group.
Resolution
This procedure describes how to restore Exchange 2003/2007 to a Recovery Storage Group if a file-level backup of the mailbox was originally performed:
1. On the Start menu, point to Programs, then point to Microsoft Exchange and click System Manager on the Exchange server, which will be a restore target.
2. Expand Administrative Group Object and expand Servers.
3. Right-click the server's name, point to New, then click Recovery Storage Group.
4. Specify a location for the transaction log files and for the system path in the Transaction log location and in the System path location boxes. Make sure that the location specified for the Recovery Storage Group's transaction log files differs from the location specified for the original storage group's transaction log.
5. Click OK.
6. Right-click the Recovery Storage Group that you created. Then click Add Database to Recover.
7. In the Select Database to Recover dialog box, click the Mailbox Store that you want to restore to the Recovery Storage Group, then click OK. (Note: Microsoft does not support restoring a Public Folder store to a Recovery Storage Group.)
8. In the Mailbox Store Properties dialog box, review the properties of the mailbox store, then click OK.
9. Restore a full backup set to the server where the Recovery Storage Group is located.
- Start Catalogic Software DPX. On the Start menu, point to Programs, then point to DPX, and click DPX GUI.
- Once logged in to the DPX GUI, Navigate to the Restore Interface and select Restore File.
- Browse to Source Node where the Exchange server databases reside.
- Expand the node and select the Exchange database and Mailbox Store that are to be restored.
- Select the backup set from which you would like to restore.
- On the Destination source, select the server to which you will restore the database (leave as original location, which is the default for the restore).
- Expand the Exchange database and select the same Mailbox Store that you selected within the source node.
- You will not see the Recovery Storage Group you have just created. When a Recovery Storage Group is created on a server, Exchange checks to see if the database that is selected for the restore operation is present in the Recovery Storage Group. If it is present, the database files are restored to the Recovery Storage Group. If it is not present, the restore will fail.
- Under the Define Restore Options, select Commit Restore and Mount Database under Exchange 2000 handling in the Destination Settings section and select Relative Path for Destination Path.
- Begin the restore procedure.
10. After the restore has completed, open the Exchange System Manager and verify that the Recovery Storage Group and designated Mailbox Store is present and mounted.
11. Continue with the procedure needed to recover mailbox(es) from the Recovery Storage Group to the existing Exchange 2003/2007 server. In the Exchange System Manager, select the mailbox to be restored into recovery storage group. Users can be bulk-selected or single-selected for recovery, though only one mailbox store can be selected at a time.
12. Next, select the Recover Mailbox Data task.
13. Select the destination mailbox store for the data and decide if the data should be merged or copied.
The following notes explain the logic behind the Merge Data option:
- Recovered data is merged back into its original corresponding folders.
- If a message is recovered to a folder in the target mailbox that does not match the message found in the original source mailbox, a duplicate of the message will also be written to the target mailbox folder that matches the original folder from the source mailbox. This feature is designed to have parity with ExMerge.
- The last modification time is used to determine if the source message should replace the target message.
The following notes explain the logic behind the Copy Data option:
- All data, including the entire mailbox hierarchy, is copied to a folder in the user's mailbox. This folder name is localized and formatted as Recovered Data <date> <time in GMT>. It will be located in the root of the user's inbox.
- Localization is determined based on destination mailbox LocaleID. If the destination mailbox does not exist, the Exchange System Manager client culture is used.
After the described process is complete, you can choose to schedule the actual copy or merge process, which resembles the Move Mailbox being scheduled in Exchange Server 2003. If any items are corrupted during the merge, they are logged to the detailed log and the merge continues uninterrupted. There is no way to set a number-of-corrupted items threshold as there is with Mailbox moves.
Note: Steps 11 - 13 have been extracted from the Microsoft documentation which can be found at:
www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/rmd.mspx