Exchange mailbox item restore

[SMITAdmin]

We are running Exchange 2003 SP2 on Server 2003 SP1. I finally completed a successful Information Store backup to disk with the option to restore individual mail items enabled. (Yes I have heard all the bad things so far about this, but I'm desperate to reduce our 17hour "legacy" mailbox backup). My question is when restoring a single email message from this backup, can I do it live without affecting the exchange store/database at all?

I was about to restore my "test" email message that i deleted, but I then noticed all the options under the "Microsoft Exchange" Settings and I wasn't sure what to choose or what affect it will have. Do these settings come into play if I am restoring a single mail item, or do they only matter if restore an entire information store? The settings are "Log Recovery options" and the options to "Dismount the database", "commit after restore" and "Mount database after restore."

I was afraid to pull the trigger on the restore for fear it might knock my exchange store offline or kick the users out. (All hotfixes are installed for Backup Exec 11d - hotfix 2 and hotfix 6). Thanks for the help.

[David_Sanz]

Chris

The options you are afraid of only apply when restoring the entire Information Store, not when using a granular restore from a GRT backup.

If the backup is on disk, the restore is direct. If it were on tape, you would need a temporary disk folder on your server where Backup Exec restores the entire Information Store, then extracts the necessary documents in a two-step-process.

Regards

[SMITAdmin]

Great, Thanks David! With all the problems I have read about GRT, I was affraid it might do something crazy!

[Vince_Di_Nenna]

Dave,

Thank for answering the question above. That helped!

Regarding copying the whole IS snapshot to disk, if on tape.

Can I redirect where the tape image is placed?

Here's what's happening-

We have a single BUE 11d server backing up 12 servers. For Exchange 2003, I tried to restore a single folder under someone's Inbox. The whole IS is copied to the C:\TEMP of the BUE server. There isn't enough space on this drive to hold the image, but the E: and F: drives have tons of space. How can I point the IS image to either of these 2 drives?

I installed the newest Hotfixes as of 2/6/07 w/ Live Update. I restarted the BUE server. Do I need to reinstall AOFO on Exchange and restart the Exch server also?

Thanks for any help you can give,

Vince

[Vince_Di_Nenna]

Found it in the documentation:

If you restore individual items from an Information Store backup set that is on a device other than a backup-to-disk folder, then Backup Exec must temporarily stage the entire database to a path on the media server to extract individual items. Because of the potentially large file sizes that are created in the staging location path, system volumes should not be used as a staging location.

To enter the path, on the Restore Job Properties pane, under Settings, click Advanced, and then enter a path in Path on media server for staging temporary restore data when restoring individual items from tape.

It's at the bottom of the screen in Advanced during the restore setup.

Vince