Test your Exchange Restore Capability - Tips for Restoring

Ehlo All,

So, I've been using AppAssure's MailRetriever (part of Replay product) on Exchange 2007 (& other types of servers) for about 9 months now, and have been impressed for it's ability for continuous data protection (aka snapshots) and ability to natively write VM files (e.g. VMware Workstation, VM Server, VM Player, ESX, ESXi, and Hyper-V). I've used it numerous times to restore individual Exchange items and traditional files. BUT, a major concern has arisen recently. I've been working with AppAssure support for over a week to resolve a significant issue with item level restores and no good news yet. My major concerns are that the Replay product reports a restore success, but it's not. I've replicated the issue 3 times and support has been notified and working on it. Restoring an entire user's mailbox folder (e.g. Sent Items) results in almost 500 missing items (from about 85k). Yet, OWA/Outlook/exmerge to PST report about 500 more items that the restore and matches the correct folder item count.

During this time, I needed a way to test restores. So, originally, I would create a test AD (Test Account1) and email account (taccount1@somefake.addomain.com) and then restore my data to this account. And then I would delete the AD and email account, and re-create on the next restore. So, I've gotten good at deleting AD accounts and purging mailboxes. But, I found a better approach. Just delete the email account and purge it from the database and then re-create it for your next test. Why delete the AD account, it's not necessary. Some helpful sites to learn the commands.

1) Delete Exchange attributes from AD User (disconnects mailbox from AD user)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997210.aspx
Here is what you need to type in bold.
[PS] C:\Windows\System32>disable-mailbox bserebin@somefake.addomain.com

Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Disabling Mailbox "bserebin@somefake.addomain.com" will remove the Exchange
properties from the Windows user object and mark the mailbox in the database
for removal.
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [S] Suspend [?] Help
(default is "Y"):y
-------------------------
2) Deletes disconnect mailbox(es) in Exchange Server 2007
Type the following 3 commands found on this page (skip option "Removing a single entry")
http://msmvps.com/blogs/andersonpatricio/archive/2007/10/08/removing-disconnected-mailboxes-in-exchange-server-2007.aspx

Also, In my testing of this issue, I made a full export (copy) of my DC & Exchange 2007 servers. And then I run them (NIC configured) via VMware Server to host only mode. This makes the servers visible to only the VMware Server. I then have a full shadow production environment. So, now I can test against the backup software. I originally detected the issue when I did a full mailbox restore to another AD account on my Exchange Server and compared sizes & item count and noticed the large discrepancy. I'm also in the process of getting Backup Exec 12.5 and ARCserve (r12.5) to test restores via those products as well. Curious to see how well they work.

So, far my Backup Exec 12.5.2231A x64 testing has been painful since the default install on Windows 2008 from a demo downloaded via their website does not show the Exchange Server databases. Same problem using 12.5.2231A x86 on 2003 occurred. I followed the support solution (document ID 315712) but it didn't resolve it. I'll continue troubleshooting later this week. I'll report my feedback on ARCserve later this week too.

-Ben