How to Restore Exchange 2010 Mailbox or Mailbox Item using Backup Exec 2012 #msexchange #backupexec #symantec

In This post we will explore how to restore a mailbox or a single mailbox item using Backup Exec 2012 to Exchange 2012.

Setting up the stage:

you need to make sure that you have a working backup set, we will continue from our configuration we have committed in the first part of this series: http://autodiscover.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/how-to-backup-exchange-2010-using-symantec-backup-exec-2012-msexchange-microsoft-symantec-backupexec/

To Restore a single item from the backup set:

Note: your backup job must have been configured to use GRT, otherwise you will not be able to recover single item from the mailbox database.

select your Exchange server, and choose restore:

In the data selection page, select the Exchange data and click next:

In the following screen and for the sake of this part of the article select mailbox item and click next:

In which mailbox and items do you want to restore, explore the database and mailbox to find the item you want to restore, in my case I want to restore the mail item “Test 5” which was in the administrator mailbox and I have deleted it:

Select the location of the restore, in our case I will restore it to the original location (the administrator inbox):

in the following screen, Select the options as per your restore preference, in my case I will select none and continue:

In the additional tasks, you have the option to notify some users or run pre-commands, it is a nice option and new to Backup Exec 2012 “I Loved it”, in my case I will continue:

In the summary page click next and then the restore job starts.

Now if you believe that the restore will work, I would like to tell with a lot of joy it will not .

I spent 2 days trying to figure out the reason why the restore is not working, I was getting this misleading error:

The job failed with the following error: Cannot log on to EWS with the specified credentials. Review the resource credentials for the job, and then run the job again

I searched for the error and found a knowledge base from Symantec stating that I need to configure the service account in the form of “account@domain.name” not “domain\account”, I did that and even suspected in the SSL certificate and created a new one with no luck no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work.

so back to the basics, I read the BE admin guide, and went to the GRT restore part to find interesting statement:

Backup Exec also creates an impersonation role and a role assignment for Exchange
Impersonation. Exchange Impersonation role assignment associates the
impersonation role with the Backup Exec resource credentials you specify for the
restore job.
Backup Exec creates and assigns the following roles:
■ SymantecEWSImpersonationRole
■ SymantecEWSImpersonationRoleAssignment

and all of a sudden things started to make sense, to access EWS and restore item for another mailbox, you MUST have the impersonation rights, well powershelling my Exchange server, I didn’t find the mentioned roles, it looks like setup is broken and didn’t create them or they weren’t created on my server for a reason or another.

to fix this issue, assign the BEadmin the impersonation permissions using the following cmdlets:

1- Command to create a new role called SymantecEWSImpersonationRole:
New-ManagementRole -Name SymantecEWSImpersonationRole -Parent ApplicationImpersonation

2- Command to assign a user to SymantecEWSImpersonationRoleAssignment:
New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Role SymantecEWSImpersonationRole -User Username SymantecEWSImpersonationRoleAssignment

Reference: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH125119

trying again I got a very nice error “again” :

The job failed with the following error: Cannot restore one or more mailboxes. The database that the mailboxes reside in is dismounted or is not accessible. Ensure that the server is available and that the database is mounted, and then run the job again.

Honestly I was trying to restore the administrator mailbox, so I tried to restore a normal user and it worked .

Lessons learnt: don’t be misled by error messages, and it is always reading the architecture again and again for every feature you are using.

by now you should be able to restore single item from your Backup Exec 2012 backup, next blog post will talk about restoring an entire database.

have fun !!!

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