Exchange 2007 backups against user error (Maybe SonicWALL CDP?) 1

[JJSRich]

We've got a backup system in place that can restore the Exchange server as it existed the night before to bare iron. What we don't have, and what the General Manager is asking for, is basically, he deletes a bunch of his email and calendar items by mistake, I go back into the backup and through magical jiggerypokery I restore the deleted items.

I am looking at the SonicWall CDP family, namely the 110 for this purpose. I ma getting conflicting info though, some sources saying that the 110 won't backup Exchange or Active Directory without a SonicWALL CDP 110/210 5 Server Application License, some saying it will. One of SonicWall's resellers carries the 2440i as an equivalent, I am unsure as to the comparison. Does anyone have experience with these devices?

What do other shops do for this kind of recovery?

 

[cajuntank]

Here what I have and totaly love it. I use a product from Appassure called Replay AppImage.

http://www.appassure.com/

I can do bare metal restores and message level recovery from as little as 5 minutes past. The way it works is, when you first set it up, the entire server's hard drives will be backed up, then by default, every 15 minutes is will take a snapshot of the changes made. It refreshes the full backup once a week. Based on my settings, I have the capability to go back an entire month in 15 minutes increments (I archive that off to tape after a month). It does data deduplication and also compresses data very well.

One of the cool things that was done during the demo was they showed a working Exchange 2007 server, stopped the Information Store service, deleted the store files, and restarted the Store service which created empty database fils. They started a restore and while he was in Outlook, sending and receiving mail (of course, there was no mail in his mailbox since the database was deleted), mail started populating back into his mailbox as it was being restored and while he was working.

Also, if you are into VMWare, the software has some pretty cool disaster recovery options for it as well.

Free demo and pricing was comparable to that of BackupExec; handles File, AD, Exchange, SQL, and BES servers.

 

[ShackDaddy]

JJSRich, isn't that what Deleted Item Retention is for? I usually have it set to 30 days for my clients, just to minimize the frequency of RSG recoveries I have to do. Alternately you can get rid of budgeted money and get a third-party solution that makes it even easier and prevents you from losing objects via hard deletions.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[theravager]

Is this just for a couple of users or for everyone?

 

[JJSRich]

theravager: This would be for everyone, small shop so 15 people.

ShackDaddy: We only have NTBackup as a nightly cron job by way of machine backup.

cajuntank: I am downloading the 30 day trial of Replay AppImage to try it out. It does look like the software w/ Exchange plugin will cost us £1300 without support, about the same price as the SonicWall CDP 110 + license, the disadvantage being, the CDP is a physical device with storage, AppImage is just software, probably a superior software, but it would take a hefty chunk out of our storage space. We are primarily a Manufacturing company that needs an IT shop.

Up until a short time ago our IT procurement has been seat-of-the-pants, and not well managed. I'm trying to change all that in my Division, but the Exchange server came to us higher up in the company, where they aren't as strict with procurement and implementation. I have no training or knowledge of Exchange administration. It was not part of the job I was hired to do, but it is now part of my responsibility. I'm pushing for training, but it won't be immediately forthcoming.

 

[ShackDaddy]

JJSRich, I just want to be clear: you already have the solution that you described above. There are two different ways you can restore your bosses deleted objects without investing in any other products. You can make use of Exchange's Delete Item Retention feature and allow your boss to undelete his own files. And you can also make use of a Recovery Storage Group to do the same thing if he manages to hard-delete them. The main thing 3rd-party products might do for you is allow you to front-load your effort by going through the time and work to install them so that the actual recovery time is shorter when it comes to restoring the lost objects.

Since you say you already have a good bare-metal DR plan in place, I'm trying to figure out what you're needing to spend money on now. I think you'll spend more time spec'ing out, installing and learning one of these products than you would learning how to use the native tools to do almost the same thing. Whether you need one of these products depends on the scope of your recovery needs, and so far you haven't described anything that can't be handled natively.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[JJSRich]

As I said in my previous post, in more words, I have no clue what I am doing. LOL

I need a good training course or book on Exchange administration... that's what I need. Deleted item retention, recovery storage group, all these things, they do not make sense to me. I was hired as an IT assistant, not an Exchange admin.

 

[ShackDaddy]

There are a lot of resources out there, and some of them are focused particularly on Exchange backup and recovery. You could look at articles at MSExchange:

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/high-availability-recovery/

Or check out this video course that focuses narrowly on Exchange 2007 recovery:

http://www.trainsignal.com/Exchange-Server-2007-Backup-Recovery-Training-P37.aspx

Or get the How To Cheat at Exchange 2007 Administration book and focus on the backup/recovery section...

It's actually not that difficult to practice item-level recovery in a production environment, so get started!

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net