Restoring mailbox items from previous version of Exchange

[Julian_Baker]

We recently migrated from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. The old Exchange 2007 server has been decommssioned and removed from the network after the successful move of all mailboxes and pub folders to the new Exchange server. The old Exchange server was backed up regularly with Backup Exec ver. 12. We still have several of these backups on a NAS. One of our users has managed to lose all of the messages in his Inbox dating back prior to the migration. We would like to try and restore these items using one of the older backups from Exchange 2007 (taken just before the mailboxes were moved to Exchange 2010) but because the backup set references the old Exchange server, we cannot do the restore. Apparently, Backup Exec is looking to communicate with that server during the restore process but because the server doesn't exist anymore, the job fails. Even tried redirecting the backup to another mailbox currently located on the new Exchange server to no avail. The lost items aren't turning up in any of the searches that we've done using the new Exchange 2010 Discovery searches feature so really need to try and recover the data from the older backups. We are currently using Symantec Backup Exec 2010 R2 on the Exchange server. Is there any way to achieve this? Thanks,

Adam

[sbora]

I don't think that this is a tested scenario and as such supported. But it may work. What is the error in the redirected restore job?

Even if you want to restore to original mailbox you will have to use redirected option.

Make sure that System Logon Account is set as default logon account in Backup Exec and is used for restore purpose (in the Exchange redirection tab make sure that System Logon Account is specified to connect to Exchange server). See if this helps resolve the issue.

[Ruchi]

Try creating a test environment if possible

and install exchange 2007 and then try to restore from ur backups

[Julian_Baker]

sbora,

We are using the System Logon Account for the restore job, but even there, when we test the credentials in the Restore Job settings, the test fails with "A communication failure has occurred". We assume that this is because it is trying to reference the old Exchange server which no longer exists. If we simply run the job anyway, it fails saying that the following error:

Error : e0000f04 - The media server could not connect to the remote computer. The remote computer may not be running the Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows/Linux. Make sure that the correct version of the Remote Agent is installed and running on the target computer.
For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-3844

If we try to re-direct to a mailbox on the new Exchange server, we get the following error:

Error : e00002f8 - Cannot open one or more mail messages because of unknown MAPI errors. Review the job log for more information.
For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-760

[sbora]

The error that you are getting in redirected restore doesn't seem to be related to fact that data is from previous version of exchnage. Can you try restoring a mail from latest backup set (one that was backed up after upgrading exchange 2010) and get the result?

Also if you run test credentials in the restore job it will fail as it will try to connect to original exchange server  which is not longer available. This is normal. What you need to make sure is that under the Exchange redirection tab the account specified under Server Logon Account is set to System Logon Account and this account has all the permissions required for Exchange 2010 backups/restores.

[pkh]

You cannot mount an Exchange 2007 mailbox in Exchange 2010.  It is a Microsoft limitation, not BE.

You can use something like Ontracks PowerControls to extract the mails from the .img files that you have on your NAS.