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Recover mailbox from expired tape clarification

Answered Recover mailbox from expired tape clarification

  • Monday, February 13, 2012 4:18 AM
     
     
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    Hi

    I need to restore a mailbox from an expired tape in DPM 2007 with Exchange 2007 and was unaware that once the tape has been expired you can no longer restore the mailbox. With current backups to disk or tape (not expired) I create an Exchange RSG and then use DPM to restore to it followed by a powershell command to select the mailbox and destination mailbox - this works fine everytime for me.

    Once I have recatloged the tape and imported it I can restore basic data from the tape and also restore the actual storage group as in the .edb file, however as mentioned above I cannot restore a mailbox database as the option is not available. At first I thought this was an issue with my backups, but after some research and Google searches I've discovered this can not be performed and a 3rd party tool would be required to restore the mailbox from the raw edb file..... is this correct? Also is this the case with DPM 2010 and the up coming 2012?

    This post: http://scdpm.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/recatalog-expired-tape.html states at the bottom:
    When you use this option to restore a Exchange mailbox; On the restore tab you will be unable to drive down to mailbox level. It is also not possible to restore to the Recovery Store Group (RSG).

    This post has not been answered by MSFT for some reason: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dpmexchbackup/thread/cb26595a-6f63-4461-bce5-d99c3596772d 

    Any clarification would be apprecited and also any ideas on how to restore the mailbox *without* a 3rd party tool?

     

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  • Monday, February 13, 2012 5:48 AM
     
     
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    That's correct. If you want to restore from an expired tape, the only option is to restore the database to a network location (which can be the exchange server where you have your RSG configured).

    Restoring from Disk or from a not expired tape allows you to drill down the DB to reach a specific user mailbox and then start a restore. Even though you are able to right click a user mailbox and select recover, DPM really restore the WHOLE database to RSG and from there you use Exchange tools/3rd party tools  to restore the desired user data. The only difference here is that with a 'valid' Recovery Point, DPM automatically leaves the restored Database mounted on RSG and if the tape was already expired, you will need to do this extra hop of attaching/mounting the restored DB....

    Thanks, Wilson Souza - MSFT This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

     
  • Monday, February 13, 2012 7:14 AM
     
     
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    Thanks for the quick reply Wilson,

    However, we can't mount an old instance of the restored DB, as my understanding is that would cause all sorts of issues with the Exchange objects, so it would be only of use to mount the restored edb file into a RSG group which is not possible. So it looks like we are stuck with using a 3rd party tool to recover Exchange mailbox data from expired tapes and that is really poor IMHO. I mean the client has purchased DPM in the beleif that it will backup and restore data of Microsoft products without requiring further purchases!

    Anyway, can you answer my other question which was is this still the case with with DPM 2010 and the upcoming DPM 2012?

    Thanks
    Keith

     
  • Friday, April 20, 2012 7:00 PM
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    Kpawson,

    Once a tape is expired all you can to do is copy the data off tape to a network location.  I am not positive but I beleive on the Exchange side you can move the DB into an RSG and manipulate it as needed.  Have you asked this question to our Exchange team?  I am going to close this thread and have responded to the other.  Thanks

    Regards, A.Nadar, This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.