How does one restore just a few emails from backup?

[eod]

All I need to do is recover a few emails from tape and print them out. Our current server has not crashed or anything like that. I'm wondering what are the minimum steps that I could take in order to bring up these few emails up from backup. I'm hoping to skip a lot of the lengthy steps from the disaster recovery papers.

Can I just copy off my current priv.edb and pub.edb and then restore the priv.edb and pub.edb from the tape. Print the emails and then restore back my current priv.edb and pub.edb?

Here is some info:
No Brick Level Backups
Backup using Backup Exec 8.6 using the exchange agent
EXS5.5
NT4.

Any advice would be awesome!

 

[Alshrim]

Yes .. but before copying off your *.edb files.. you MUST stop all services first.. so that all changes to the Databases are committed.

But as you and I have discussed over AIM -- much better to have a backup Exchange server for restoration purposes.. just to make sure your Production server is left alone.

Cheers Dude! Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet

 

[Zelandakh]

BE with Exchange agent? That IS a brick level...

Just restore from there...

 

[Mully]

Zelandakh ~

It's only brick level if he MADE it brick level. He stated that they are not doing brick level. Otherwise, he wouldn't be posting to this board.

Mully

 

[jakess]

What is brick level?

 

[Mully]

Jakess ~

It's the term used when you are backing up your email server at the message level. If someone deletes a particular email message and it's past the retention period . . . you can restore that one message if you are performing brick level backups.

Mully

 

[jakess]

I thought that one can only recover all the mailboxes and not messages or a single mailbox.Is that a limitation of backup software?

 

[Mully]

Jakess ~

Most backup packages out there have an Exchange "plug-in". This is usually referred to as the Exchange Agent. What backup software are you using?

Mully

 

[jakess]

Legato Networker. We have install the package for Exchange but we can only recover all mailboxes and not individually.

 

[toetag]

ArcServe has an Exchange agent that does brick level. It can be a royal pain to get setup but once it's working I've never had a problem with my brick level restores. I can restore a single message or back up a single message.

 

[ebo33]

We are using Arcserve to backup our exchage servers but I don't see the options to restore just a single message. A single mailbox with the whole messages in the inbox is possible to restore but not just a single message. What you are probbably saying is you restore the whole inbox to a temporary mailbox and copy that one message out of the temporary mailbox to the user mailbox.

 

[toetag]

No, what i said is what we do. I have/can back up single emails or restore single emails. Not sure why i'd be able to do it and other couldn't. Using Arcserve 2000 Backup Agent for Exchange with backup server with Arcserve 2000.

I can drill down to the message level in restore/backup cases.