Issues restoring an Exchange 2003 backup to Exchange 2007

[Rob_H1]

All,

  I need to restore a backup from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. Are there any issues I may run into while performing this operation? I have read over the Netbackup Exchange admin & solutions guides and do not see anything of concern. I just want to double check that I am missing anything.

I am namely interested in the following:

-Is there any data loss when restoreing up Exchange 2k3 backups to Exchange 2k7 servers?

-Are there known issues or limitations when trying to restore Exchange 2k3 to Exchange 2k7?

-If restores are possible, what requirements are needed to do the restore?

Again, as I understand from the documentation, this operation should be the same as restoring to an alternate server with the same requirements.

Does anyone know of any issues/gotchas with this type of cross-version restore?

Thank you for your help

[Marianne]

This question should rather be asked on a Microsoft forum.

I found the following on a MS Exchange forum which indicates that this is not possible:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/exchange/en-US/6c4552dd-030c-4b80-bdbc-4964447cd71f/resto... 

[Rob_H1]

Marianne,

Thanks for the prompt response.I posted my question here because I am using NetBackup 7.x to perform the restore as opposed to a microsoft solution. My appologies if I did not make that clear. Did I misread the Netbackup documentation? Is an Exchange 2003 restore to Exchange 2007 also not possilbe using Netbackup?

Thank you,

Rob H.

[ontherocks · Accepted solution]

Its not possible to perform restore of Exchange 2003 on Exchange 2007 due to the difference in Structure.

You need to have one Exchange 2003 server with Same MailBox Database structure (Also need to have specific mailbox created) which needs to be restored in Recovery Database.

Then follow the same process of restoration :-

Create Recovery Database --> Perform Restore --> Extract PST --> Perform Exmerge

Then you need to import the PST in Exchange 2007

[Marianne]

Think of Exchange as buckets (structures) holding water (data). 

When you bacup using NetBackup, Exchange sends the water to NBU, not the buckets.

When you restore, you need to ensure that Exchange provides the right kind of bucket to receive the water.

So, the database structures is what makes it a Microsoft issue, not NetBackup.
And this is why I suggested that you ask on a Microsoft or Exchange forum.
The backup product that is used does not matter when the issue is with underlying structures.

[ontherocks]

Any luck on this ? were you able to restore this ?