This week I've had to refresh my memory with something I've not done in a long time. I had to recover a mailbox store for an urgent mailbox restore, but in this case the server that was the home of the mailbox at the date they wanted had been decommissioned long ago. This presents a problem with a) the recovery storage group, as the 'add database to recover' dialog will not show the store, and b) backup exec, which wants to log on to the old server for some reason! This is how it was done (our servers are all Exchange 2003 SP2 (native mode) and backup exec is 11d).

Also for a quick sanity check before kicking off the restore I had checked the database tab on all the stores, just to check 'this database can be overwritten by a restore' was not checked.

For an older Exchange restore (Exchange 5.5) you would need a temporary server to rebuild to replicate your old 5.5 environment.

Starting up

1.    Recall the tape!
2.    Inventory the drive and catalog the tape. Note the mailbox store name that contains your target mailbox.
3.    On the server you are using for recovery, create the recovery storage group (this can have any name, just ensure there is enough disk space for the database files where you create it)
4.    Say for example the store you need to recover is called “Mailbox Store 1 (SVHEXBETEMP01)”. Obviously when you right click on the RSG and select “add database to recover”, this database will not be in the list. To get around this, you have to create a new mailbox store that has this name. You can do this on any server in your org. The name has to match exactly with the store you are recovering.
5.    Now right click on the RSG and select ‘add database to recover’ and add the new store.
6.    Go back to Backup Exec. Click Restore -  new restore job (not by wizard)
7.    Change beginning backup date as required.
8.    View by resource, and drill down to the required store
9.    Under Microsoft Exchange Redirection, check ‘Redirect Exchange sets’. Enter the server name to redirect to
10.    Under Microsoft Exchange, select ‘Restore all transaction logs until point-in-time; skip transaction logs after this time’
11.    Change path for storage of temporary files to a volume that has plenty of free space.
12.    Uncheck mount database after restore.
13.    Run now!

Restoring the mailbox

1.    If the mailbox you are restoring still exists in your org, migrate the mailbox to your new store (e.g. “Mailbox Store 1 (SVHEXBETEMP01)”)
2.    If they mailbox does not exist, create one with the same name in this store.
3.    In the RSG, right click on the target mailbox and use the recovery option. Select the target (you probably will not be able top modify this option)
4.    Copy option is safer than Merge.
5.    Now you can use ExMerge to extract the PST, or just tell the user their data has been recovered.

Cleaning up

1.    Migrate the user back to their original location.
2.    Delete the temporary mailbox store.
3.    Delete the recovered mailbox store and recovery storage group.
4.    Delete the database files from disk.