BE 2012 Restoring to Recovery Storage Group Exchange 2003 Help

[mdwdrw]

Hello, first post. I am a BE 8.6 user that recently upgraded to BE 2012. We are a 2003 Domain running Exchange 2003. I am doing a Full Backup of our Information stores every night. Today I attempted to restore a backup to my Recovery Storage Group of one of my Exchange stores. With NT backup, it knew to restore to the Recovery Storage Group. I found a lot of vague information about restoring exhange 2003 using BE 2012 and even less information about restoring to the recovery storage group. But decided to click through a restore and see what would happen. I never in a 100 years would have expected the restore to overwrite a mounted live exchange store. That is very powerful software.

Well, it bombed out. It attempted to restore over the production store. The only redirect option for an exchange backup is to another exchange server, at least with my configuration. The production store is now corrupt an unusable. Fortunately I ran exmerge on the store so I have the pst files before I attempted the restore. I have deleted the affected mailboxes and recreated them on another store. I am in the process of importing the PST files to get the data back.  I really could use some specific instructions of how to restore to the recovery storage group in Exchange 2003 with BE 2012. It should not be this complicated.

I am testing my abilty to recover exchange using BE 2012 before I need to do it, hopefully never. Thank you. I apologize, but this is my first time using this forum and I am not exactly sure how to search it yet.

[VJware]

This is the process with earlier versions of Backup Exec, I guess it's the same with BE 2012 as well - http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH29719

EDIT *** oops, late by few secs...

[SuperBrain]

Exchange 2003 restore to RSG job settings did not require 'redirection' to be configured. Exchange 2003 worked in a way, that, when it detects a recovery Storage Group present and mounted for a particular Storage Group, it would 'by default' let the restore go to that RSG database..

These might help:

How to prepare Exchange 2003 so that a Recovery Storage Group Restore can be performed

About restoring data using the Exchange 2003/2007 recovery storage group or Exchange Server 2010 rec...

In brief, this is what you need to do:

1. Create a RSG (follow the technote above).

Note: It is important to Mount the RSG Store once, so empty database containers are created for the restore job.

2. Go to properties of that RSG store - Database tab - make sure "This database can be overwritten by a restore" is selected.

3. Create a restore job with the database in question selected (like you would do if you wanted to restore on live production environment)

4. Run the job and be rest assured the restore will go to RSG database. (you can open Windows Explorer and browse to the RSG database location, keep hitting F5 key to make sure you see increase in byte count  )

[mdwdrw]

Bhavik, I had read the first tech note before attempting the restore. I also did the follow the steps you list above. But that was not what happened. I was watching the restore from the BE console and the path was to the actual live store not the RSG as I expected. I canceled the restore and from that point on, the production store would not mount and was flagged as corrupt. During the restore, it also froze the exchange server so that I could not access it through the console and the phone started blowing up because Outlook had become unresponsive on the desktops even though the main store was not the one I was working with. I have a small store for my department that we use for testing. I will review the steps, but they are similar to NT backups restore, which I have done successfully in the past. I appreciate the assistance.

We are a not for profit and purchased BE 2012 from Tech Soup. I don't believe it includes tech support. Other than this problem, the software is backing up and I have been able to restore folders/files and directories. Have you actually performed a restore with BE 2012 to the Recovery Storage Group? I can't believe the software is so powerful it was able to do anything to a mounted production database. That is a little scary. mark

[SuperBrain]

Although i'm pretty confident it should not have done what you mention (and im not saying i dont believe you). But i'm gonna test this out in my Lab setup and get back to you in some time.

[SuperBrain]

While configuring the restore job for Exchange, do you remember selecting the option for "Redirect to Recovery Storage Group" available during the Restore Wizard?

[mdwdrw]

Bhavik, I did not have the option to Redirect to the Recovery Storage Group. That concerned me, but it seemed from reading that as long as the RSG was configured per microsoft, BE would know what to do. That was not the case. That is why I tested on our department's information store and as a caution used exmerge to create pst files of the 4 mailboxes. I am going to start over again, but testing with a test account in a test store, but what concerned me was how the exchange server locked up during the restore process. That is a little troublesome as well, but if an online store was getting overwritten, I am not suprised that Exchange was not happy even if it could not prevent the overwrite of live data. I appreciate your assistance with this. mark

[mdwdrw]

Ok, I have deleted the hosed up store. I have the 4 mailboxes working on our production store. I have a test mailbox in my newly created store. Tonight I will get a backup and then attempt to restore to the RSG again, but not with any live email accounts. Lesson learned. I will take screen shots of each step during the restore process. The screen shots in the link above this, are from an earlier version of BE and look completely different from BE2012. The only option to redirect was to another exchange server not to the RSG unless I missed it, but I went through creating the restore job multiple times before I actually did the restore. Also, I have Granular backups selected, but don't have the option to restore indivdual mailboxes when I try to do a restore. I can only select restoring the information store. That is fine, but do I need to do a full backup including the C and D drive along with the system state to have Granular restores as an option or is it not available to exchange 2003. The documentation for Symantec is very vague or at least difficult to follow as it relates to configuring an exchange backup and a restore. mark

[SuperBrain]

1. While configuring the restore job, make the selections and click Next.

2. On the "Where do you want to restore the database..." screen, select "To a different location"

3. Enter your Exchange Server name and click Next

4. On the "Where do you want to redirect the databses.. " screen, select "Redirect to a recovery storage group"

5. Continue configuring the restore job and run the job.

You only need a full backup of Information Store in order to be able to restore GRT information from a backup set.

If you have a good full backup of IS, you may be missing some permissions/requirements for GRT.

See http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH130255 (click on Exchange Agent)

[mdwdrw]

Bhavik, Well step two is the "catch" That could have been a little clearer. We restore user files all the time to different locations, but I would have believed in this case the steps are backwards. The backup knows what server and stores they came from already. The radio button "two a different location" prompting for a server name would indicate a different server name should be entered, not the original. At least to me. So I never got the screen to redirect to the storage recovery group. When using NT backup to restore to the RSG, it knew to do that without having to redirect the restore. Well, as long as I know it won't happen again. Thank you for taking the time to test this and point out my mistake. Hopefully your simple directions could actually make it into Symantec's 800 page user guide. I think from the steps you originally posted in the beginning for prepping the RSG and the last step if someone like me came across this thread, they would be able to easily do this type of restore. I will look at the tech document for restoring individual mailboxes. Our 100 GB exhange backup runs in less than 3 hours. When we used to backup with 8.6 individual mailboxes it would take all night to run and eventually we had to abandon that and start backing up the stores and depend on the RSG for individual mailboxes. I can't thank you enough for your assistance. I will post tomorrow after I have successfully done this. One question about RSG. Your directions don't mention unmounting the RSG after you mount it for the first time. Do you leave it mounted, or do you unmount it and delete the files in the directory before the restore. I recall with NT backup, it needed to be unmounted and some log files needed to be deleted and there was a utility from a cmd prompt that played the restored logs and made it mountable after the restore. mark

[SuperBrain]

You must unmount the RSG before restore. Mounting it once is required so it can create the necessary database files.

You don't need to manually delete any files from the RSG folder as one of the option called "Purge the existing data and restore only the database and transaction logs" does that for you.

I agree, like NT Backup, the previous versions of Backup Exec (2010 R3 and prior) did not require to select any redirection options in order to restore to RSG for Exchange 2003.

IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU PERFORM ALL SORTS OF TEST RESTORE ON A TEST DATABASE / TEST ENVIRONMENT before you have to do it in actual production.

[mdwdrw]

IT IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU PERFORM ALL SORTS OF TEST RESTORE ON A TEST DATABASE / TEST ENVIRONMENT before you have to do it in actual production

Isn't that the truth. I chose our departments mail store because there were only 4 of us and we have used it for testing in the past. Needless to say, Of all departments, we probably need our email the most. I could not even reset my password here to log in and ask since my box was hosed up along with the others.

I have not set up the permissions as described in the above tech article. I am going to leave the current job in place and test tomorrow and if all goes well, will try adding the account. Currently I am using the system account for accessing all my servers. I believe I can follow the directions though. Thank you again. mark

[mdwdrw]

Bhavik, I was busy this morning and finally got around to testing the restore to my RSG. I followed all the steps and it errored out. To be sure, I redid the RSG a second time and the restore job a second time with the same error. The RSG database is checked ok to overwrite, but I am getting the following error. We have a short day, so I will pick this up again next week. Good news is at least the production stores did not get hosed up this time. I think it is interesting that the software would overwrite a mounted production store without a prompt, but when I point it to the RSG which is unmounted, the restore would fail. Any advice would be appreciated.

I did not get a chance to change the permission for the Granular Backup, but would like to cross this hurdle first. Thank you a ton. mark