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Mailbox restore

horsebox69
Level 3
Folks,

I just want some clarfiication on restoring the contents of a users mailbox before I go ahead.

I want to restore the contents of the inbox only - as I have 4 information stores - Do I select relevant Information Store - User - Top of Info Store - users mailbox etc and choose restore - restoring directly into the users mailbox.
I have the Enable Restore of mail messages from IS backups selected.

Does this restore the whole information store to D:\Temp on the local server and then restore the individual emails to the users account?

and\or what happens next

Any help would be appreciated.
3 REPLIES 3

D_B_5
Level 6
Employee
Yes, you drill down into the users mailbox from the restore selections screen as you note, selecting what needs to be restored.

The restore process depends on how it was backed up to begin with. If you only backed up to tape, what will happen is the storage group that the user is in will be restored to the staging area, and then from that restore the mailbox information you need will be restored to the users mailbox. This of course takes awhile to do the initial staging operation.

If you backup to disk, the restore process is immediate since the database is dynamically read from the IMG folders under the B2D folder. This is why it is recommended to backup to disk and do duplicate copies to tape since it allows for the fastest restores of individual items.

Another strategy if you only backup to tape is to do a Duplicate copy of the databse the user is in to a B2D device. The reason for this is after the duplicate copy to B2D is done, the restore of the items is much faster and you will then have the data sitting there for future restores. If you do a restore directly from tape, after the restore is done the temporary staging is cleared, so if something else needs to be restored, you would have to go through staging again. Duplicate copy to B2D instead would allow you to restore anything you missed, or another user's items, instantly becuase the database will remain after the restore.

Fergal_O_Connel
Level 2
Ok,

The users IS is approx 30gb so I started to restore the users Inbox - and the staging got to about 33gb so I was'nt sure what was going to happen -

Is this normal behaviour?

So the recommendation is to backup the mailstore(s') to "Backup2 Disk" and then back it up to tape?

D_B_5
Level 6
Employee
The staging is temporary, so it would be gone once the job completed.

If you do, or plan on needing to do, a lot of restores for your users, then backing up to B2D device, and then duplicating the job to tape is optimal for restore times. Restores from B2D is runs very quickly since the database is already in place to read from. Duplicating the job to tape gives you the protection you want for offsite storage and such.

You can use incremental backups to keep the jobs smaller if diskspace is an issue, but if you decide to do so you need to run a policy with Full and Incremental jobs setup. An incremental job, outside of a policy, cannot use the "restore individual items" option.

You can set a diskspace reserve on the B2D folder (advanced properties) and as you hit the limits, the backups will begin to reclaim diskspace used by previous jobs, as long as the protection has expired.