Backup/Restore Exchange 2003

[butter]

Can TSM backup individual mailboxes? Can TSM restore individual emails? I was told you have to restore the entire information store to retrieve somebody's email but that seems a little ridiculous.

Thanks for your time.

[nottins]

It isn't ridiculous, it's due to Exchange being a database, so TSM backs up the whole database. You can use Exmerge to export individual mailboxes to PST files, then backup these using TSM.

[butter]

There are other products out there for example Backup Express that allow you to backup individual mailboxes and restore individual mailboxes or email. I was just hoping TSM had this option.

[moon-buddy]

Butter,

Most mail servers have this "ridiculous" setup.

One of the most obvious reasons is security. Imagine if it was so easy to extract individual mailboxes, there will be a lot of security breeches.

I use the ExMerge utility to extract individual mailboxes.

[JohanW]

You have to restore an individual Storage Group. And you can do it to a Recovery Storage Group, it doesn't affect your production environment.

This is a good reason not to let your databases get too big.

[noodles]

Hi,

we have made good experience with Ontrack Powercontrols.
This tool can extract individual Mails from the Information Store.

Powercontrols use the TSM Api and can access the filespace of the TDP Node.
So without TDP Gui you can restore individual mails from TSM.

Regards
/noodles

[JohanW]

Noodles, how fast is this? Faster than restoring the database to a Recovery Storage Group? Or does it read in the entire database anyway, and is it just a different GUI?

Have to justify the 500$ to the Boss if I want this ..

[may]

I heard that wih the 5.5 version and the Advance copy service
one will be abble to restore a single mail box... via tdp
can someone confirm?

[jharris]

If you look in the TDPExchange folder there are sample scripts/option files for 'Brick Level' / Mailbox backups.

The problem is if you backup at the mailbox level, enabling you easy recovery, you need to effectively export every mailbox to a flat .pst file, increasing the storage required for your backup dramatically as you lose the single instance item store capability of the original Exchange database structure.

I like the sound of the 'Ontrack Powercontrols' product and I'm going to investigate this.

[dangel42]

Where does your Exchange data reside? Local disk or SAN/NAS? If SAN/NAS, let us know what vendor. Most disk vendors now have some method of snapshotting Exchange databases. We have had great success with NetApp's Exchange product.

[Lfictum1]

Have to justify the 500$ to the Boss if I want this ..

Johan,

Where'd you see $500 for Ontrack PowerControls? Thanks.

[egtegt]

This is the Microsoft supported way of backing up mails. They suggest to use the abilities of Exchange to keep deleted mails for a while to be able to recover one single mail.

[JohanW]

The 500$ probably came from www.ontrackpowercontrols.com, which, yes, now lists 1000$. They increased their prices, I guess. Stuff happens in a half year ..