EXCHANGE CATALOG BLANK

[Steve_Samoransk]

I have an issue. (*dont we all)

I have about 230 old LTO 1 tapes that contain Exhange 2000 data on them. (message stores). I have since upgraded all of our systems and have no catalogs from these tape.

I have inventoried all of them and started to catalog in hopes that i will be able to restore some of the message stores.

When i catalog a "set" it goes thru and askes for ... about 5 tapes and catalogs 60 GB woth of System state and other directory backups. I also can see (in the restore section) the Message stores but when i drill into them i am unable to see any detail. Only the message store name (size says 0 kb) Does anyone have a clue. Thank you.

[Saurabh]

Hi Steve,

Assuming that all these tapes were never part of the existing Backup Exec database.

Firstly, Go to Tools>options>catalogs, uncheck the Use storage media based catalogs and then catalog the tapes again. After the catalog goes through when you go to the restore selections make sure that the option 'Beginning Backup Date' is unchecked. See if you are able to locate the necessary data in the list.

Assuming that the tapes were a part of the existing Backup exec database (if it was an upgrade from pervious version)

Select the bunch of tapes which you say as 'set' from the Media set and drop them in to retired media set. Delete them from the retired media set. After this again inventory the tapes so they will appear back. Go to Tools>options>catalogs, uncheck the Use storage media based catalogs and then catalog the tapes again.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Saurabh 

[Steve_Samoransk]

Thank you for the quick response. Unfortunatly I am still getting the "blank data"

If you can provide your e-mail address i have a screen shot that will show in detail what i am taking about.

Thank you.

[Ken_Putnam]

Do you mean that you want to restore individual items (mailboxes or mail items) from the Stores Backup?

this is not possible with v10.x backups.  Only v11d with the GRT option enabled will allow this

You would have had to explictly backup mailboxes the old way, and would see "Mailboxes" as an option in the Restore Selection pane

Wth a v10.x standard stores backup, all you can do is restore the entire store (to the Storage Recovery Group) or to a standby Exchange Server.

[Steve_Samoransk]

Hi Ken

Thanks for the response. No i didnt want to restore each mailbox. I just wanted to restore the message store. I go thru the catalog process and it basically "skips" catalogging the message stores and only catalogs other data such as C:\whatever or D:\whatever ... But it only catalogs the message store name (about 4 bytes) and then skips it. I have sent info to Saurabh (the other responder in this thread) but of course i will be open to any other suggestions.

Thanks

[Clisbyt]

If you are still having problems, we are having what sounds to be almost the exact same problem...and you really need the data back there is a product called "recovery manager for Exchange" that might be useful. With the eval verision I am able to successfully catalog the problem tape, and see mailboxes with in the database...we have not decided to buy it yet, as we have an open case with symantec to resolve this...

I'm still waiting to hear back from Tech support as to how to resolve this issue, our story goes like this...backup performed on another backup server using backup exec, that is no longer available, on an LTO tape, we needed to restore the Exchange server, we tried cataloging the tape on our server (backup exec), the catalog says it completes successfully, but the byte count is 64bytes, yet I know the store I'm after is 22GB, and when I try (just in case) to restore it errors out..in the restore selection list, it shows the database, but no details...yet if I look at the properites of the tape, it says about 24GB have been used....

hope this helps you out...if Tech support finds a solution I'll post it here....

[Ken_Putnam]

This is getting into VooDoo tech support, now, but

Try shutting down BackupExec and renaming the \Catalogs folder (to \Catalogs.sav for example)

Restart BackupExec

A new \Catalogs folder should be created

Try inventory and catalog again

[Clisbyt]

Didn't try that exactly, but did move the media to the retired set, and then deleted, which removed the restore selections...then tried to reinventory, catalog, which netted me the the same results..also tried various versions of backup exec...

[Clisbyt]

Actually, now that I think about it....ah...I did try that..humm...did I just admit that?

[Ken_Putnam]

I hate to bring this up, but

Are you sure that the job that created the tape completed successfully?

[Clisbyt]

While that is an excellent (and terrible) thought, a 3rd party utility has successfully cataloged and read data from the tape in question. Please see earlier post in this thread for more info.

So yeah, it looks like the backup is good, the tape is good, the catalogs are good, but when trying to use another Backup Exec server of the same or later version to catalog and recover data is where the problem comes to light...sure makes me uneasy that backup exec can't read it's own tapes....

[Steve_Samoransk]

This issue was taken care of. It actually was catalogging the Message Stores but didnt show a byte count. Once we did the restore the byte count was there and things were good. Thank you all for your comments.

[Clisbyt]

Excellent happy to hear it worked out for you, I have to this point not been so lucky, and am still working with backup exec tech support to resolve the problem....when we try a restore it does not work, it claims that the store is mounted, but it is not...

Unable to restore some Microsoft Exchange components because one or more of the databases are currently mounted. Use the Exchange System Manager to dismount the databases, and then retry the job.

and the details section says:

Attempting to restore an Exchange 2003 Mailbox Store to a Recovery Storage Group will fail with the above-mentioned error (Figure 1) if the backup was created using snapshot technology.

We did not backup using snapshot technology.....and the story continues....Happy to hear it worked out for you though Steve!!