My Stupidity! Exchange 2003 mailbox items recovery needed - unfortunately been using VSS!

[Mark_Forsyth]

I am owning up to stupidity before I ask the question. I am fully responsible!

I have Backup Exec 11D with the Exchange option license installed. However, I have now realised that I have been backing up my Exchange 2003 (SP3) server Info stores with the AOFO option enabled, therefore all my FULL backups (logs flushed etc) have been backed up using Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). For some reason the AOFO was enabled for all jobs by default.

I have a very important Manager who stupidly deleted all his mailbox items using SHIFT + DELETE, therefore permanently deleting these items.

I really need to get these emails back. My question is, what should I do to recover this info. I know that you cannot restore this VSS info to a Recovery Storage Group. Will I need to build a new Exchange server and AD Domain Controller in an isolated network to be able to restore this info or am I screwed?

Please do refrain from the unhelpful critiques about what I have done or about the user. They really are unhelpful and I've learned my lesson, but am very lucky that a server disaster has not occurred and I am able to mend my ways!!!

Any help sincerely appreciated.

Mark

[Daveed]

I am just reviewing our exchange backup policy and attempting to do restores on a spare server we have for testing purposes. i notice in your post that you say using AOFO is a bad thing. We currently have this turned on and the backups seem to be running okay but I am a little concerned as to whether the restores will work.

Also, what effect would turning the AOFO option off have?

[Mark_Forsyth_2]

Using AOFO means that you are not using the Exchange Backup Agent (that is, if you have purchased a license for the exchange agent). You will be using VSS snapshots which means in Exchange 2003 you cannot restore these to the Recovery Storage Group which is such an easy way to restore mailboxes if that's what you would like to do. Although, from what I have read, Exchange 2007 now allows you to restore VSS backups to Recovery Storage Group.

From a recovery point of view, I'm still actually trying to recover the mailbox items and have had all sorts of issues, I think relating to the fact that I back up with AOFO (VSS snapshots) to disk and then later to tape. It just won't restore.

The effect of turning AOFO off means that you will be using the Exchange Agent (if you have a license) and that is apparently a much better way and more complete way to backup. This is now what I am currently using and works well.

I am still doing a whole lot of testing though as I, like yourself need to be confident in my own mind about what to do in the event of an Exchange "disaster". My whole idea of "I backup everything and it will be alright" is now not a good way to think! Test, test, test! Sorry I can't be much more help, just try everything you can outside of the live servers. 

[Daveed]

Okay, thanks for the advice, I will turn off the AOFO option for tonights backup and see how it goes.

I hope you manage to resolve your issue and if I come up with ideas whilst playing around with our test server I will let you know.

[Daveed]

I have turned off the AOFO and have since created the recovery storage group on exchange, ensured it is dismounted and that the database can be overwritten and tried to restore a couple of the users mailboxes to the recovery storage group.

The job tells me it has completed successfully but no mailboxes are showing in the recovery storage group when I come to use exmerge to get the data out.

Any ideas?

[Stas_Krasovsky]

I am not sure how you have your exchange setup but for us if a user deletes something from their mailbox "permanently" it can still be recovered before the next backup by doing the following.

Open outlook

Go to tools

Click Recover Deleted Items

Select the items you want and click the restore button.