Arni,

This is a limitation when doing online Exchange backups
through Microsoft's backup/restore API. Microsoft does
know that their customers still want some relief here.

They acknowledged it at the Microsoft Exchange Conference
in Atlanta but still firmly hold their ground that online
"database level" backup and restores are the fastest
and preserve the single-instance store architecture.

With Exchange 5.5 they did alleviate some of the problems
by offering a "Deleted Item" recovery function.
That still isn't quite enough. So...

When Exchange 2000 comes along, they are taking a few
more steps. That is, they will have a "Deleted Mailbox"
recovery function.  They also will allow you to
split the Information Store into multiple "Storage Groups"
and have multiple databases within a "Storage Group".
The granularity for backup and restore will be at the
database level.  This should help a great deal.

Thanks,

Del

----------------------------------------------------
Del Hoobler
Del Hoobler
IBM Corporation
hoobler AT us.ibm DOT com

> Hi there
>
> I couldn't help notice'ing that you have a quite big Exchange database,  we
> are currently moving our Exchange backups to ADSM backup, and we keep
> wondering if one really has to restore the whole database to recover one
> mailbox, or even one item.  I know this is a limitation in Exchange, but
> isn't there a way around it?  For example, some dopehead delete's his
> mailbox, would you restore 100GB of data?
>
>
> best regards
> Arni Snorri Eggertsson
> Iceland Telecom