Backing up individual mailboxes

[JeeatTT]

I used to have backup of individual mailboxes (using Backup Exec 9 I think) .... and thus the ability to resotre someone's Inbox/Sent Items if they lost it !

However, with Backup Exec Small Business Server Suite 11d v6325 I cannot see this option anymore.

I can backup the entire Mailbox Store and restore individual mailboxes but even restoring a tiny mailbox seems to take forever as the byte count goes up and up and up and it starts by doing something called Staging.

I think what it's actually doing is restoring the whole information store and then extracting the mailbox - am I right ?

Is there any reason the option to backup mailboxes doesn't seem to be available in my software ?


Regards,
Julia

 

[Zelandakh]

The idea now is that you restore the store to the RSG then exmerge it out of there. Backing up brick level is very slow you see.

 

[JeeatTT]

I don't understand your reply at all. Can you re-phrase ?


Regards,
Julia

 

[Zelandakh]

Instead of backing up both the full store "Microsoft Information Store" (aka store level) and also the individual emails and mailboxes (aka brick level) which means you are backing everything up twice, you just back up the store.

Inside the store is the mailboxes and in those are the emails that you want.

If you ever need an individual email or a mailbox, you restore the backed up STORE but not over the live environment, you restore it into the recovery storage group. Then you use exmerge to get the relevant data you need and then put it into your live environment.

The other way instead of using the RSG and exmerge is to use Quest's Recovery Manager for Exchange which can restore individual emails or mailboxes from a BE backup.

 

[JeeatTT]

Thank you very much for explaining it so clearly.

I suspected it was restoring the Information Store in order to get to the mailbox, but I had no idea it was actually restoring the store and that I then had to use another program to run to restore the mailbox I needed. This sounds like a process which is too complicated for me.
Whilst I have an IT support company, they would charge for the engineer time this would take. Also it sounds like it would take a very long time. I looked at the Quest software - it looks like a big program and there's no guide prices so it must be expensive as I have to wait for a quote!

I really want to go back to the old way I've used of being able to restore the individual mailbox/folders inside from the backup (despite the extra space needed).

Can you confirm that Backup Exec 11d Small Business Edition IS capable of backing up individual mailboxes ?

If so, I just need to wait for my IT Support Company to find out why backup setup doesn't show the individual mailboxes in the list of backup selections.

If not, I need to alert my manager to the fact that restoring lost mail is a chargeable and time consuming process that needs to be authorised first (as opposed to something I can just do for my users).

Regards,
Julia

 

[Zelandakh]

I don't know BE11 SBE at all so can't comment. Does the RSG method take longer? Possibly.

Quest's Recovery Manager is around $15 per mailbox from memory though a quick call to your local agent should get a verbal quote based on mailboxes.

If a user loses mail, you should be using DIRT so that they can recover their own mail.
If your admin loses a mailbox, you should be using DIRT so that you can recover the mailbox.

The only time you really need mailbox/mail level recoverability is for recovery of specific emails from old archives for compliance or legal reasons - certainly I've never needed to do it for a good 10 years.

 

[JeeatTT]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. What is DIRT ?

However, when I originally posted I was really just hoping that someone could let me know if my software CAN backup individual mailboxes (as I used to before, albeit with my older version of BE).

I used to be able to recover an individual mailbox / folder quickly and easily - the idea of having to recover the whole Information Store from tape just to retrieve someone's Inbox or Sent Items sounds like it would take a very long time as it has surely to retrieve say 20GB of mailboxes from tape instead of just 0.5GB (for most users).

I've never seen Exmerge so I looked up an article and there's no way I'd be able to use it - I'd have to pay my IT company to set it up - which puts mailbox recovery beyond my reach financially.

I'm still hoping that someone here will be familiar with 11d SBS and be able to clarify that I can backup individual mailboxes as I used to do and show me how to activate the feature. Surprisingly, my IT support company seem unsure at the moment as to whether this feature is available in my software and are investigating - I'd hoped to find a quick answer here.


Regards,
Julia Evans

 

[Zelandakh]

Deleted Item Retention Time.

Can you do it with your BESBS? No idea, not a product I know but if you can't see the option then you either haven't installed the option or you don't have it.

You should never need to restore Inbox or Sent Items. If a user deletes their entire Inbox contents, they go to Recover Deleted Items in Outlook. They can continue to recover those deleted items for the length of time specified in the DIRT on the server. I recommend you make this one day longer than your retained backup set (see

http://nickgillott.blogspot.com/2006/10/backup-strategy.html

for a suggestion on backup sets).

If they cannot discover that their Inbox has been deleted until after the DIRT has expired the items, in my normal case that is 92 days, then you recover the mail store to RSG.

Exmerge. This isn't rocket science. Start, run, exmerge. It is a wizard and asks you for a GC, the Exchange server name, the store name, the user name and where to put the PST it will create. You don't need a consultant for that. Then you exmerge the other way from PST into the live store or use Outlook if you want to cherry pick.

In 10 years working with Exchange, I've not needed to restore indiv mailboxes from backup because of DIRT and Outlook recover items.

If I've missed a scenario, do please let me know.

 

[MilesBlue]

In order to view the options as before BackUp Exec 11d you have to enable legacy mailbox support.

To do this you have to go to tools>options>Microsoft Exchange and check the box that sais enable legacy mailbox support. Now you should be able to select individual mailboxes.

DIRT is a good exchange feature but I've had it were it hasn't worked when you deleted entire folders.

 

[Zelandakh]

Does BE SBS Edition install on Windows 64 bit? Is it legal or can you only install it on SBS Server 2003?

Does it back up Exchange 2007 which ought to need a VSS based backup app?

 

[searchingpaths]

I am brand new to this forum and saw this question. It sounds like you have your own Exchange Server since you want to restore boxes or even individual emails. I do not remember the details, but our Exchange Server has a policy to keep even deleted items for 30 days. I had to make a simple registry change. Here is an article that explains it pretty well.

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Recovering-Deleted-Items-Exchange-Server-2003-Part1.html

If you follow these instructions you may not need to rely on Backup Exec for mail box or message recovery.

 

[Zelandakh]

Yes, that's DIRT that we've been discussing. The registry entry just allows Recovery within Outlook by folder rather than just in Deleted Items.

Yes the OP does have his own Exchange server.