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officecore's avatar
officecore
17 years ago

BESR 8.5 How do I restore an Exchange 2003 Information Store

We have BESR 8.5 for SBS Server.

I dont actually have the Granular Restore Option showing up even though it is meant to be included with the SBS version of BESR 8.5.

What I would like to know is how to recover the Information Store in the event that the Exchange database goes bang. Ive tested a complete restore of a test SBS server and it worked fine, however I simply do not see the option to recover the exchange information store should that go bang, obviously I would not want to do a full recovery of the 2003 sbs server just to recover the info store.
Maybe its part of the GRO option I dont know, having said that I dont have the GRO option showing and it certainly was not available when I ran the install.

 

Any links to online docs would be fantastic as I cant find any info in the included user manual for restoring exchange, it talks about using VSS for VSS aware databases like exchange but nothing about restoring one.

Backup and Recovery
BESR 8.x
MS Exchange
Restore
System Recovery

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  • marcogsp's avatar
    marcogsp
    Level 6
    17 years ago

    I work with the server edition, and it requires a separate install of GRO.  I know SBS edition is supposed to include GRO, but it may require a separate installation if it is not showing up in the Symantec BESR program group.  It is supposed to be a separate application.

    GRO can not recover an entire Information Store.  Please refer to this technote for the GRO capabilities.

    http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/303179.htm

    The next time to test your full server restore in the lab, try this. Open Exchange System Manager  and dismount the Mail and public folder stores.  Rename the MDBDATA folder to MDBDATA.bak.  Better yet, rename the folder an copy it to some other drive for safe keeping. Restore the MDBDATA folder folder from your BESR image using Recovery Point Browser.  Next use ESEUTIL to defragment the information store databases, which also rebuilds the indexes.  More info on that process here:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192185

    If all goes well, you should be able to mount the recovered stores sucessfully.  If not, delete the restored MDBDATA folder, and recover the original from safe keeping.  I have not tested this method on a new server installaion built with the /DisasterRecovery switch, but I plan on doing so in my next lab session.

     

     

  • marcogsp's avatar
    marcogsp
    Level 6
    17 years ago

    A lab environment is also a great place to become familiar with the ISINTEG utility.

    This is a utilty for testing and repairing the integrity of Exchange databases.

      More info on that here:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301460

    I generally run ISINTEG with the -test alltests switch, since most modern servers will run throug the tests fairly quickly.  Back in the good ole days, you would pick the individual tests you wanted to run, just because the hardware was too slow to cycle through all the tests efficiently.  The information stores must be dismounted in order for ISINTEG to be used,