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.

Exchange Server 2007 Backup and Recovery Part 5 – Recovering Individual Mailbox Items

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In Part 1 of this series I explored the backup requirements for each of the Exchange Server 2007 server roles.  In Part 2 I demonstrated Mailbox server database backup and recovery, and then in Part 3 I demonstrated the backup and recovery process for Hub Transport and Edge Transport servers.  In this part 4 of the series I will discuss the backup and restore process for Client Access servers.

The Client Access Server Role

Client Access servers perform a similar role to that of “front end” servers in previous versions of Exchange.  The Client Access server is responsible for all non-MAPI connectivity to Exchange server data.  In other words, anything that is not a Microsoft Office Outlook connection to a mailbox or public folder is handled by the Client Access server.  This includes Outlook Web Access, ActiveSync, and Exchange Web Services.

The nature of this role is such that it relies on Microsoft IIS to make these services available.  Because of this the Client Access server is one of the more complex when it comes to backup and recovery.

Backing up the Client Access Server

The data that needs protecting by backup for the Client Access server is located in several places:

• Exchange server configuration stored in Active Directory
• Configuration files stored in the file system (C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\ClientAccess)
• IIS customizations stored in the IIS metabase

Similar to the Hub Transport server the Exchange server configuration can be recovered from Active Directory using the setup /m:RecoverServer command.  Assuming the Active Directory is already backed up by your Domain Controller backup strategy the Client Access server backups only need to take into account the configuration files in the file system and the IIS metabase.

However there is a downside to this.  When setup /m:RecoverServer is used to restore a Client Access server, and then the IIS metabase is restored afterwards, the Client Access server will experience errors.  Because of this, Microsoft recommends keeping a manual change log of all customizations made to the Client Access server, such as changes to the default virtual directories, or any new virtual directories created.

A workaround for this is to perform a full backup of the file system and System State for Client Access servers.  This allows you to restore the entire server without causing problems after the IIS metabase is recovered.

Recovering the Client Access Server

Since there are two approaches to backing up the Client Access server role there are also two approaches to recovery.

The first is to use setup /m:RecoverServer to reinstall Exchange on the replacement server.  Then, restore the C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\ClientAccess files from the most recent backup.  Finally, manually apply all customizations that have been recorded in a change log.

The above method will work provided your change log is up to date and accurate.  Any discrepancies will potentially lead the recovery effort astray.  This method is also quite tedious and error prone in complex environments.

The second approach is to use a complete server backup for the restore.  In this scenario the new server is installed with the operating system only.  There is no need to join it to the domain or even to give it a static IP address provided a DHCP server is available.  Next, restore the last full server backup onto the server.  It is likely that the server will then require a restart.

This second approach is less effort and will tend to be more accurate but requires that more data be backed up each night than for the first method.

Recovering Individual Email Items

In Part 2 of this series I demonstrated the recovery of an entire mailbox database.  In some situations it may be necessary to recover just a single email item from a backed up mailbox.  In the next part of this series I will demonstrate how to restore single mailbox items.

Exchange Server 2007 Backup and Recovery Part 4 – Client Access Servers

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In Part 1 of this series I discussed backup and recovery for each of the Exchange Server 2007 server roles and associated systems such as Active Directory.  In Part 2 I then described the process of backing up and recovering a Mailbox Server from the loss of a mailbox database.  In this part of the series I will demonstrate backup and recovery of the Hub Transport Server and Edge Transport Server roles.

Backing up Transport Servers

Unlike Mailbox Servers, the Hub Transport and Edge Transport roles do not require any special Exchange-aware backup software.  All of the necessary data for recovering a Transport server is contained within:

• Active Directory (for Hub Transport servers, but not Edge Transport servers)
• The Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) database (for Edge Transport servers)
• The server’s file system
• The server’s System State

Hub Transport servers can be backed up using the built in Backup utility in Windows Server.  At the very least the backup should include the System State and the C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles location of the file system (and all sub directories).

Edge Transport servers are backed up in the same way as Hub Transport servers except for the Exchange Server configuration.  Because this is stored in ADAM it must first be cloned using the Export-EdgeConfig.ps1 script located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts.  Execute the script with the name of the file you wish to export to. Note this is a single command run on one line in the Exchange Management Shell.

export-edgeconfig.ps1 c:\edgeconfig.xml
 -key "abcdefghijklmnop"

It is recommended to either include this config file in your Edge Transport backups or use a path that is a shared folder on a remote server.

Recovering Hub Transport Servers

In this scenario the EXCHHUB server has been lost due to hardware failure.  Spare server hardware has been used to reinstall Windows Server 2003 along with the Exchange Server 2007 pre-requisites.  The newly built server has the same name and IP address of EXCHHUB.  Now we can begin the recovery of the Hub Transport server.
First, remove any Edge Subscriptions that existed for the Hub Transport server being recovered.  If you skip this step you may receive a certificate error during the recovery install.

In a command prompt run the following command from the location of the Exchange setup files.

setup /m:RecoverServer /DoNotStartTransport

This runs setup in recovery mode along with an additional instruction to not start the Transport services straight away.  This is so we can restore our mail queue databases and log files from the most recent backup before the server is put back into operation.

Recovering Edge Transport Servers

In this scenario the EXCHEDGE server has been lost due to hardware failure.  As with the Hub Transport server a new server and operating system has been installed with the same name and IP address.

To recover the Edge Transport server we will use the ImportEdgeConfig.ps1 script that ships with Exchange Server 2007.  First we run the script against the exported Edge config file from earlier to validate its contents. Note, this command is all one line.

ImportEdgeConfig.ps1 -cloneConfigData c:\edgeconfig.xml
 -isImport $false -CloneConfigAnswer c:\configanswer.xml
 -key "abcdefghijklmnop"

Validation succeeded for ConnectivityLogPath element of
 type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for MessageTrackingLogPath element of
 type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for PickupDirectoryPath element of
 type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for PipelineTracingPath element of
 type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for ReceiveProtocolLogPath element
 of type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for ReplayDirectoryPath element of
 type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for RoutingTableLogPath element of
 type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for RootDropDirectoryPath element of
 type NullableDirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for SendProtocolLogPath element of
 type DirectoryPath
Validation succeeded for SourceIPAddress element of
 type IPAddress
Validation succeeded for SourceIPAddress element of
 type IPAddress
Validation succeeded for Bindings element of type Bindings
Validation succeeded for Fqdn element of type FQDN
Answer File is successfully created: c:\configanswer.xml

Note that the key is the same one used when the Edge config was exported earlier.  If any validation steps were unsuccessful open the answer file in a text editor and adjust the settings that it lists as invalid.

Once the config has been validated it can be imported with the same command but modifying the -isImport parameter to $true. Note again this is a single command.

ImportEdgeConfig.ps1 -cloneConfigData c:\edgeconfig.xml
 -isImport $true -cloneConfigAnswer C:\configanswer.xml
 -key "abcdefghijklmnop"

Importing Edge configuration information Succeeded.

Now that the Edge Transport server configuration has been restored you can re-create the Edge subscription between the Edge Transport and Hub Transport servers.

How to Back Up and Restore Client Access Servers

In the final part of this series I will demonstrate the process of backing up Client Access servers and then recovering them from failure.

Exchange Server 2007 Backup and Recovery Part 3 – Transport Servers

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In Part 1 of this series I explored what needs to be backed up for each of the different Exchange Server 2007 server roles.  In this post I will demonstrate a Mailbox Server failure and the recovery of the mailbox database from backup.

Backing up the Databases

The first thing we’ll need is a backup of the databases on the Mailbox Server.  For this demonstration I am using the built in NTBackup program for Windows Server 2003 to back up both of the storage groups for the server.

Mailbox Server Failure

The next step is to cause a server failure.  In the real world a potential point of failure for Mailbox Servers is the storage.  Typically databases will be located on SAN volumes, and a storage failure will cause the database to go offline.  To simulate this I simply remove the database file from its path on the test server.

Restoring the Database

Before beginning the database restore operation we must first prepare the database for recovery.  To do this open the properties of the Mailbox Database and tick the “This database can be overwritten by a restore” check box.

Using the NTBackup program we can now commence the restore of the Storage Group containing the Mailbox Database.

Mailbox Database restores will not automatically initiate a transaction log replay and then mount the database unless we specifically choose to.  This is for situations where the restore will involve a “full” backup set followed by a “differential” backup set, or followed by one or more “incremental” backup sets.  In this case we are only restoring a full backup set, so we can enable the “Last Restore Set” and “Mount Database after Restore” settings.  We must also specify a temporary path for log and patch files.

Once the restore operation is complete we can see that the Mailbox Database is now mounted and online again.

What Just Happened?

When the last restore set has been restored to the server it begins rebuilding the database using the recovered database and transaction log files from the backup set.  These transaction logs are replayed from the temporary location specified during the restore operation.  This achieves the outcome of restoring the database as at the time the backup was taken.  In the real world this would typically mean the previous night.  So what about all of the email that has been sent and received since then?

Again, in the real world Exchange Mailbox Server storage uses SAN volumes, or at the very least a disk layout that uses separate storage for the database and transaction logs.  This improves recoverability by ensuring that a failure of a single disk volume only causes the loss of the database or the transaction log, and not both at the same time.

In this demonstration that means that the transaction logs that have been generated by all of the current day’s email activity are still intact.  When the restore operation finishes with the data that came off the backup set it then begins to reply the transaction logs that still reside on the Exchange Mailbox Server.

This operation brings the database completely backed up to the current point in time, fully recovering all email items that were contained in it prior to the database failure.  Once this log replay operation is complete the database is mounted and made available to email users again.

How to Back Up and Restore Transport Servers

In the next part of this series I will demonstrate the process of backing up Hub Transport and Edge Transport servers and then recovering them from a failure.

Exchange Server 2007 Backup and Recovery Part 2 – Mailbox Servers

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