Help! How to restore Exchange from recovered Tape!
Traig Zeigler
I have a 4mm DAT (DDS-2) Full Backup of an SBS 4.0a (NT4) server. The backup
was performed just prior to doing the SBS 4.0a to SBS 4.5 upgrade. The
backup was performed in August, 1999 with Backup Exec 7.x for SBS and was
reported 100% successful. Now, I need to restore the Exchange 5.0 IS to
retrieve certain items from one or more of the user mailboxes.
One problem I've run into is that Backup Exec reports the tape as "bad
media" when I attempt to perform an inventory operation on it. I have
contacted a data recovery company that specializes in tape media, and they
will recover the data onto spanned CD's (the Full Backup contains ~3.8gb of
data). That means I will have the data from the tape, but I won't be able to
use Backup Exec's Exchange restore features, and will have to restore the
individual Exchange DS and IS files in order to recover the mailbox data. In
other words, I believe I will have to perform an operation very similar to
an Exchange restore using an offline backup.
Here are my questions:
Do I have to perform the restore on the original server? The original server
was upgraded to SBS 4.5, which is running Exchange 5.5 SP3. The Full Backup
was performed on SBS 4.0a, which was running Exchange 5.0. I have another
server set up with SBS 4.0a for the sole purpose of retrieving the tape
data, but of course its SAM does not match the SAM of the original server.
But, all I need to do is access a few user mailboxes to retrieve certain
messages.
Are all the critical Exchange files needed for the restore operation found
in one directory? If so, which directory? If not, where are they located?
Is there a KB doc or other source of info that will describe step-by-step
the tasks I need to perform in this case?
This situation is critical--any and all help will be much appreciated!!
TZeigler MCSE, CCEA
James Bond
production exchange server from the domain. (All Exchange services shut down)
I setup a new server with the same name, OU, and Site. Then did a restore of
the IS to the new server. There are some minor issues here. See isinteg
-patch. Once it was all funcational, I then unplugged the restored server from
the network. Then re-added the production server to the domain. I know most of
you Exchange heads are going to cringe at this, but now I have the luxury of
having a duplicate Exchange server to run Exmerge or whatever I need to get the
old e-mail. For what it's worth. It worked.
Rich Matheisen [MVP]
>This an Exchange DS/IS restore question. Here's the situation:
>
>I have a 4mm DAT (DDS-2) Full Backup of an SBS 4.0a (NT4) server. The backup
>was performed just prior to doing the SBS 4.0a to SBS 4.5 upgrade. The
>backup was performed in August, 1999 with Backup Exec 7.x for SBS and was
>reported 100% successful. Now, I need to restore the Exchange 5.0 IS to
>retrieve certain items from one or more of the user mailboxes.
>
>One problem I've run into is that Backup Exec reports the tape as "bad
>media" when I attempt to perform an inventory operation on it. I have
>contacted a data recovery company that specializes in tape media, and they
>will recover the data onto spanned CD's (the Full Backup contains ~3.8gb of
>data). That means I will have the data from the tape, but I won't be able to
>use Backup Exec's Exchange restore features, and will have to restore the
>individual Exchange DS and IS files in order to recover the mailbox data. In
>other words, I believe I will have to perform an operation very similar to
>an Exchange restore using an offline backup.
No, your problem is a bit more complicated than that. An off-line
backup has, at least, only a static set of files to deal with. Your
situation involve the databases, the .PAT file, the .LOG files, and
the need to have the "Restore In Progress" subkey in the MSExchangeIS
registry key filled in with the information necessary to perfrom a
"hard recovery". Because the EDB.LOG file isn't present on the backup
medium you won't be able to do a "soft recovery" and, even if you did,
the PRIV.PAT file wouldn't be applied to the database before the log
files were replayed.
Oh, BTW, the data on the CD's you'll be getting back isn't (I believe)
in the form that you can simply copy to the disk as you would a file.
Tape backups use their own format to write the data.
In short, you've got problems.
>Here are my questions:
>
>Do I have to perform the restore on the original server?
No. The PRIV.EDB and PUB.EDB can be restored on a different server
(but the organization and site names must be identical to the original
machine from which the backup was made). Don't attempt to restore the
directory.
>The original server
>was upgraded to SBS 4.5, which is running Exchange 5.5 SP3. The Full Backup
>was performed on SBS 4.0a, which was running Exchange 5.0. I have another
>server set up with SBS 4.0a for the sole purpose of retrieving the tape
>data, but of course its SAM does not match the SAM of the original server.
You can restore the SAM from the previous installation (I think).
Unless you encrypted the SAM it should work.
>But, all I need to do is access a few user mailboxes to retrieve certain
>messages.
>
>Are all the critical Exchange files needed for the restore operation found
>in one directory? If so, which directory? If not, where are they located?
You tell us, it's your server!
>Is there a KB doc or other source of info that will describe step-by-step
>the tasks I need to perform in this case?
No, there isn't.
>This situation is critical--any and all help will be much appreciated!!
Whether MS PSS can (or will) help in this situation I can't say. But
I'd sure be calling them. If it's critical then newsgroups aren the
place to be fishing for answers. :)
------------------
Rich Matheisen
MCSE+I, Exchange MVP
MS Exchange FAQ at http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm
Jeff Middleton [SBS-MVP]
Note the most important question, but could be a major help: Is this the
same tape drive involved and are you sure that there is not a switch setting
for using hardware compression on backup and restore that either has been
changed, or the drive was replaced?
Let me suggest what I would see as the ideal process for making this restore
happen in the easiest manner. Ideally, you would like to have the ability
to restore the entire fileset from the backup to a drive that you could
either mount in the original server hardware, or in the surrogate server,
provided that it's a server of similar hardware, including specifically the
motherboard, video card and drive controller. Generally, with SBS 4.5, if
it's an EIDE drive system that was in use, most any EIDE drive and
controller would be compatible so long as the motherboard itself is not
exotically different. Failing the ability to run this restore from the
surrogate server, you would perhaps take the original server (assuming
that's what's in use running the LAN now) offline for a couple of hours one
evening or weekend for some extra credit work! If you get the server to
boot the old SBS system, you could then load an email client (Outlook) and
save the mailboxes in question to .PST files. These files are independent of
the Exchange version and therefore portable. You then bring that file to
the client workstation of your choice, return the SBS server to it's normal
(current condition), then use either a selective or total import from .PST
to bring the files back into the new Exchange system, just like you might
import files from a laptop to the Exchange Mailbox.
Your problems here are many, as you realize.
Assuming that you get back a complete backup of the entire system from the
tape, your easiest route would be to restore the entire thing to either the
surrogate server, or to a scratch drive (new, blank, large enough to hold
the system full restore of the system partition and the Exchange database
files if they are on a partition other than the system partition itself.
If you can't get a full backup restored from the data recovery service, you
also have the option to restore any earlier backup of the original SBS 4.0
server and then use only the Priv.edb and Pub.edb from the data recovery
process to recover the entire Exchange system, even if the other files are
from a completely different timeframe. There can be more issues in this
process than I'm highlighting now, but it's enough to move onto the next
scenario.
The most obvious route will be determined if you get a complete return of
the tape from the recovery. Assuming you do, here's what I would recommend.
You are going to get back from the recovery service your files on CD media,
but what remains unclear is if they (data recovery) are going to perform a
restore of the tape to uncompressed files on the CDs (just the way the look
on a hard drive, minus NTFS permissions), or if you are going to get back an
"image" directly of the tape based format of the file structure, or possibly
a third possibility is that they will employ a 3rd party product to compress
the restored files into a restorable image that spans the CD and contains
all the requisite NTFS permission to make it possible to recover the entire
system state. I'm guessing that the data recovery folks thought about this
and are providing you what would look like an "xcopy" of the files from the
original hard drive, not an image of the tape....but you should confirm
that. If they are providing you a set of the files using a drive imaging
software (such as Drive Image Pro) that directly supports restoring the CDs
to a hard drive, this will likely do a full overwrite of a blank drive to
restore the system. You should confirm that, in fact you should probably
request that if it's an option because it's going to be the easiest recovery
for you.
If they send you back an image of the tape itself, it's not therefore
easily transferred to a hard drive, then you need to communicate between the
Data Recovery service and Veritas for advice.
Your next problem will be dependent upon information from the data recovery
service as to whether or not they believe the recovery is 100% or flawed.
Either is a possible scenario. For your purposes, a less than 100% recovery
is not necessarily a problem.
Ideally, you get an entire image of all partitions.
Alternatively, you at least get enough to have a boot able system from the
old SBS 4.0 system files, and therefore the ability to move from there.
Minimally, you get only the priv.edb and pub.edb....and then you must have a
restore of the old SBS 4.0 server, or you have a whole messy problem to
solve the restore process.
Working from the original server hardware eliminates a level of complication
in being able to fire up the old SBS software, but you may find that the new
server is as good a solution. If you BSOD on boot, you'll most likely have
a problem related to the VGA card involved, provided the motherboards are
similar as well as the drive controllers.
There are too many unknowns to map the entire process from here, you need to
clarify some of the issues to narrow the focus of the problem. There are
KBs to use, but so much depends upon where you end up going that you might
just post back an update and tell where you are stuck.
"Traig Zeigler" <tzei...@lrs.com> wrote in message
news:#ljl$UJYAHA.1932@tkmsftngp04...
> This an Exchange DS/IS restore question. Here's the situation:
>
> I have a 4mm DAT (DDS-2) Full Backup of an SBS 4.0a (NT4) server. The
backup
> was performed just prior to doing the SBS 4.0a to SBS 4.5 upgrade. The
> backup was performed in August, 1999 with Backup Exec 7.x for SBS and was
> reported 100% successful. Now, I need to restore the Exchange 5.0 IS to
> retrieve certain items from one or more of the user mailboxes.
>
> One problem I've run into is that Backup Exec reports the tape as "bad
> media" when I attempt to perform an inventory operation on it. I have
> contacted a data recovery company that specializes in tape media, and they
> will recover the data onto spanned CD's (the Full Backup contains ~3.8gb
of
> data). That means I will have the data from the tape, but I won't be able
to
> use Backup Exec's Exchange restore features, and will have to restore the
> individual Exchange DS and IS files in order to recover the mailbox data.
In
> other words, I believe I will have to perform an operation very similar to
> an Exchange restore using an offline backup.
>
> Here are my questions:
>
> Do I have to perform the restore on the original server? The original
server
> was upgraded to SBS 4.5, which is running Exchange 5.5 SP3. The Full
Backup
> was performed on SBS 4.0a, which was running Exchange 5.0. I have another
> server set up with SBS 4.0a for the sole purpose of retrieving the tape
> data, but of course its SAM does not match the SAM of the original server.
> But, all I need to do is access a few user mailboxes to retrieve certain
> messages.
>
> Are all the critical Exchange files needed for the restore operation found
> in one directory? If so, which directory? If not, where are they located?
>
> Is there a KB doc or other source of info that will describe step-by-step
> the tasks I need to perform in this case?
>
> This situation is critical--any and all help will be much appreciated!!
>
> TZeigler MCSE, CCEA
>
>
>