How to backup and restore Exchange 2010 using Backup Exec 2010 #Exchange2010 Part2 #Exchange #backupexec #symantec #mvpbuzz

for Backup Exec 2012 version of this series check my article: https://autodiscover.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/how-to-backup-exchange-2010-using-symantec-backup-exec-2012-msexchange-microsoft-symantec-backupexec/

In this part we will explore the options to backup and restore the data using Backupexec from the Exchange Server.

Backupexec offers 2 ways to restore the data to Exchange:

• Using Mailbox database restore, which restore the entire database this could be used in case of database corruption either logically or physically.
• restore individual mailbox or mail items (mail or attachment for example) from the backup set, this is a more practical solution in day to day operations in case of email item got deleted or a mailbox needed to be recovered for a reason or another, in order to restore a mailbox or individual email item, BE uses the Exchange web services to restore the mailbox or the email item thus you need to be aware of any network/firewall requirements that might be needed to make this happens.for the sake of this blog post, we will explore option 2 (restoring individual email items and mailboxes) since option 1 will be explored in the following blog post exploring corrupted databases, lost logs and dirty shutdowns.Exchange 2010 Backup job Creation:

  to create a backup for the Exchange 2010, open the BE management console and create a backup job, from the job creation section:

  from the wizard point to the Custom Selection to be able to select individual mailboxes/databases, otherwise you will select the hall DAG and backup all of the mailbox databases

  

  in the custom selection select the mailbox database you want to backup, in order to select the mailbox database browse the Microsoft Exchange databse availability group > yourdomain > DAG FQDN > then point to Microsoft Information store and the individual mailbox databases will be displayed in the right pane, then select the desired database, in my case it is “DB1 – A”

  

  In the “Backup Strategy” Page, select the desired backup strategy, for the sake of this configuration I will select Full Backup, you might want to consider other options based on your environment

  

  in the backup schedule, select the backup the job now to run the job immediately:

  

  in the backup destination, select the available backup devices:

  Note: in this blog I selected a device call DEV1 which represent ad backup to disk location I have configured in the initial BE configuration, this configuration is outside the coverage of this blog post

  

  In the “how long do you want to keep the data” I selected keep infinitely, you might want to consider other options based on your configuration

  

  in the job name type a name that identifies the backup job, then click submit:

  

  you can now monitor the job progress in the “Job Monitor” section:

  

  Exchange 2010 Restore job Creation:

  as I mentioned earlier, the scope of this blog post will cover individual Mailbox or mail item restore, mailbox database restore will be covered in later blog posts.

  to restore a mail item let us first login as user1 from the OWA:

  

  I used a C# application to sent user1 several emails to generate the emails that can be used in restore and logs.

now let us delete the emails from 5 to 10 and try to restore them from the BE backup we just did.

now I did a hard delete for the emails:

now to restore those emails, let us create a backup restore job, in the welcome to the restore wizard click next:

in the next screen you have 2 options either select the mailbox you want to restore (or the database) or the individual email item, the restore process for mailbox/item differs from the mailbox database restore since the first uses the EWS to restore those items, I will select the individual items I want to restore (test message 4 to 10) and restore them, to do that open the user 1 mailbox in the restore selection pane:

go the top of information store and select it (don’t tick the selection box yet):

and select the individual emails you want to restore back and click next:

in the restore credential page, make sure to select an account that has the permissions we talked about in the Part1 of the article, to validate the account permission click test and continue only when successful:

in the job name, type something useful, and click next

in the Exchange options, keep the defaults and click next:

at the wizard end page, choose to restore now and click next:

and you can monitor it in the jon monitor section

if the user is currently logged in, he will receive the following message from administrator:

after the job completion, in the OWA the user will find the restored items:

Summary:

In this article we explored the individual items/mailbox restore from the Backupexec 2010 to the Exchange DAG, we will explore the mailbox database backup/restore in more details with multiple variations in the following parts of this series, so keep following us .

Mahmoud