Back in Part 2 of this series I demonstrated how to backup the Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox Server role, and then how to use that backup to restore an entire mailbox database in the event of a disaster.  In this part of the series I will demonstrate how to use that same backup to recover individual mailbox items.

Mailbox Item Recovery for Exchange Server 2007

The backup utility that is provided with Windows Server 2003 is capable of backing up and restoring entire mailbox databases for Exchange Server 2007.  However it is not natively capable of restoring an individual mailbox item (such as a single email) should the need arise.

Some third party Exchange backup products do provide this functionality however this comes at a cost.  Fortunately all they are doing is providing a simple interface for a built-in feature of Exchange Server 2007 to perform the restore.

For businesses on a budget or anyone who simply chooses to use the built-in backup utility for backing up their Exchange servers you can still recover individual items thanks to Recovery Storage Groups.

What is a Recovery Storage Group?

A Recovery Storage Group is an Exchange Server 2007 feature that allows the administrator to create an “invisible” storage group that can be used to restore a mailbox database and extract data from it without affecting the production database that is being accessed by end users.

The Recovery Storage Group is only used for restore and recovery operations.  It is never connected to by an end user using Outlook or other mail protocols, and the mailboxes contained within it are not associated with any Active Directory user accounts.

Restoring Mailbox Items using the Recovery Storage Group

In this example the user “John Smith” has deleted an email from the inbox that was received last week.  The Mailbox server is backed up every night and so the email administrator knows that the item is likely contained within one of the previous nights’ backups.To begin the recovery process launch Database Recovery Management from the Toolbox of the Exchange Management Console.

Fill out the activity name, server name, and domain controller name and click Next to continue.

From the list of tasks choose “Create a recovery storage group”.

Link the Recovery Storage Group to the same storage group as the mailbox you intend to recover data from, and click Next to continue.

Give the Recovery Storage Group a name (the default name is fine) and modify the other settings if you wish.  The Recovery Storage Group does not need to be located on the same drive as the storage group or mailbox database you are recovering, but once it is created it cannot be moved so make sure you choose a location with enough free disk space to hold a copy of the mailbox database.

When this has completed go back to the task center and click on “Set up ‘Database can be overwritten by restore’ flag”.  Choose the mailbox database for the Recovery Storage Group and complete the task.

Now that the Recovery Storage Group has been created a restore operation from the Windows Server 2003 backup utility will recover data to the Recovery Storage Group rather than to the production database.

Once the restore has been performed click on “Mount or dismount databases in the recovery storage group”.  Select the mailbox database and click on “Mount selected database”.

Return to the task center.  Now we can begin to extract mailbox data from the Recovery Storage Group.  Click on “Merge or copy mailbox contents”.  The mounted database within the Recovery Storage Group will be selected.  Click on “Gather merge information”.

Click on “Show Advanced Options” and set the start data and finish date to the date range that you wish to recover mailbox items from.

Click on “Perform pre-merge tasks”.  A list of available mailboxes will be displayed.  Make sure you have only selected the mailbox that you wish to recover items for, then click on “Perform merge actions”.

When the merge has completed the items will be visible in the end user’s mailbox without them needing to restart Outlook.

After the mailbox item recovery is complete we need to remove the Recovery Storage Group from the server.  In the task center click on “Mount or dismount databases in the recovery storage group” and dismount the recovery mailbox database.  Return to the task center once more, click on “Remove the recovery storage group” and follow the steps to complete the task.