Tdp for Exchange Disaster Recovery restore

[damianinpa]

All,
Are there any documents for a DR recovery of Exchange 2003 using TDP?
Here is my Scenerio:
Running Exchange Server 2003 SP2. TDP installed doing Full Backups on weekend and INCR during the Week (Legacy). No Replication to Hot Site.
At DR Test, will restore Active Directory/domain and create new server and will install exchange. Are next steps to recover storage groups or must I manually create them again and dismount them before restore?? Will I run into Exchange/Microsoft issues?? I am hoping there is document outlining this.
Another Wrinkle....was thinking of putting Cristie on this box for Bare Metal Recovery. Can I just recover box with Exchange in tact and then just restore mail stores with TDP? Not sure if box will really come back properly from Cristie with Exchange running on server.
Damian

 

[straitor]

Damian,

I don't know of any IBM documents specifically for an Exchange DR scenario, but if you don't already have it, the TDP for Exchange Install & User's Guide is here:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoc...x.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.itsmc.doc/baclients.html

Under "Storage Manager for Mail".
I believe it outlines some recovery scenarios.

Greg

 

[hyderchicagotsm]

We have done a DR for an Exchange server that was in Active /Passive cluster. The only thing that we restored were the Exchange Storage Groups. But even if you restore the data drives along with the Storage Groups, it shouldnt be much different. The only deviation from a normal DR is restoring the Exchange SG's. Basically you would follow the following high level steps to restore a stand alone Exchange Server ( assuming you are just restoring the SG's):

Install the Windows 2003 OS
I think you need the correct .NET framework package before installing Exchange. So you will need that.
Install Exchange Server.
Install BA Client/ TDP Exchange.
Start the Storage Group restores. We didnt mount the storage Groups after the restore.

The only issues we encountered were related to the .NET Framework/ Exchange install. Once that was sorted we didnt have any issues.

 

[THE_WIPET]

Here are some interesting fack about Dial-Tone restore for Exchange 2003 - I like this technic (Never tried it, Exchange is not part of the DR scenario yet). I like the fack that you install an exchange server with empty mailbox so that the user are ready to recieve and send e-mail ASAP. Since our two exchange servers are 2.2TB each i like this option. When everybody is able to send et recieve e-mail. Now i can attack the recovery of my SG with the RSG. This will give me time and put less of a rush on the Exchange restore. Since they have access to e-mail.. they can wait a couple of hours or days to have there old e-mail. We actualy have 1 VIP Exchange SG, all important email account are there so it would be the first SG to restore after the dial-tone

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998947(EXCHG.65).aspx

Another interesting one

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-Dial-tone-Restore-Method-Part1.html