Restore Exchange 2007 Database to alternative forest Netbackup 7.5

I would like to share my experience/notes/tips restoring the user mailbox by restoring Exchange 2007 database to alternative forest when using Netbackup 7.5.

1. You will need to build alternative (restore) forest. You will need 2 servers – Domain Controller and Exchange Server – if you use x64 bit machines, you will also need workstation with Outlook
2. Install AD, Exchange 2007 Server
    2.1 Schema prep for Exchange should be run on DC; all other commands on Exchange server. Great link   on the subject: http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/installing-exchange-2007-part1.html
    2.2 Exchange Org name in the restore forest must be identical to the production.
3. Create Storage Group and Mailbox Store in restore Exchange Server with names identical to production ones (if you have many SGs and MBs, create the one that you are going to restore)
4. Install Netbackup client on the restore Exchange Server
5. Follow article http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH57346 to create Recovery Storage Group (make sure you have enough disk space for restore both on data and log LUNs) and initiate restore
  5.1 On “Restore Marked Files/Microsoft Exchange” Tab (step 13 on the link above) uncheck “Mount database after restore”
 5.2 Make sure DNS resolution works between production and restore forests, use hosts file on restore Exchange Server and Netbackup master server if needed
6. Restore will run and fail with status 2850 (after committing logs on restore Exchange) – disregard the failure.
7. On restore Exchange in “Microsoft Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant” (you have it open following link in step 5) go back to task center “Go back to task center”
8. In the task list click: “Mount or dismount databases in the recovery storage group”, you should be offered the DB name that you just restored, and then complete task. DB should get successfully mounted.
9. Go back to task list
10. Click “Merge or copy mailbox Contents”
11. Mounted database should be selected by default, click “Gather merge information”
12. On next screen click “Perform pre-merge tasks”
13. After it runs, you should be able to see names of users in the restored database. Note to make sure you have the user you would like to restore listed. For example, we need to restore mailbox of ‘John Smith’, make sure you found ‘John Smith’ in the list of users.
14. Go back to Exchange Management Console and create a dummy user/mailbox that will be used to have mailbox content restored to “John Restored”
15. Go to Exchange Management Shell and run the command to restore mailbox content: Restore-Mailbox –rsgmailbox ‘John Smith’ –RSGDatabase ‘Recovery Storage Group\MB2’ –Identity “John Restored”
  15.1 Note: MB2 – Name of the database to restore
  15.2 –Identity – specifies the mailbox on restore Exchange where the content will be restored to.
16. You will be prompted to enter the “TargetFolder” – enter anything you like – that folder will be created under Inbox in the target mailbox (‘John Restored’)
17. After restore completes, login to the “John Restored” mailbox using Outlook on workstation (which was mentioned in step 1) and export mailbox content to pst.

Very important troubleshooting step in case of cluster failure!

Go to command prompt and run following command: “cluster.exe /gen” This command generates cluster log in the following location: c:\windows\cluster\reports\. If command is not ran – no cluster log generated. Earlier this command ran, better chances it will have useful information to troubleshoot: default size of cluster logging is 100M, which is like 24hr of information before it gets overwritten. I highly recommend increasing the cluster log size to maximum possible 1024M (if you can spare 1G C: drive for that). Great article about the subject is here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2010/04/13/understanding-the-cluster-debug-log-in-2008.aspx

Restore from FlashBackup fails with error 2817 - Netbackup

Client name is case sensitive in Netbackup. When specifying the client in "Backup, Archive and Restore" the name has to match the name in the client list of the backup policy (ie. serverA is not equal to SERVERA). Failure to do so is another reason of error 2817 while restoring the file backed up by FlashBackup policy. More on this: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH188002

Netbackup 7.5 - accelerator + de-dupe - error enabling to use accelerator

When using the option “Use accelerator” on the policy screen, you may get the error that the storage unit can’t be used for accelerator type of the backup. Fix is to manually enable storage server and disk pool for accelerator type of backup by manually adding flag OptimizedImage: the procedure is explained in details on the following post: http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/unable-select-use-accelerator-msdp-storage-unit

HOWTO reactivate the employee in Enterprise Vault Compliance Accelerator v9sp3

Find the AddressOwnerID of the reactivated employee by running following query on the customer DB: SELECT AddressOwnerID, DisplayName FROM tblAddressUser WHERE Surname='Last Name' After findng AddressOwnerID, supply it into the following query and run on the customer DB: UPDATE tblAddressUser SET Deactivated=0 WHERE AddressOwnerID=AddressOwnerID from the query above

Exchange GRT backup failure (Netbackup) caused by name resolution

The most common problem with backup using Netbackup is name resolution. Servers/clients have to be resolvable by the computer name (not fqdn), which in multi-domain environment brings some challenges (servers have to be added to the hosts file on the client). Most recent problem: Exchange GRT backup finishes with status 1 (ie. not good for single item restore), which was fixed by fixing the name resolution.

Netbackup VM client file restore – error 2817

Restore file from “FlashBackup-Policy” backed up client fails with error 2817 when started not from the master or media server. Solution: Start restore from master or media server or add the workstation the restore is being started from to the client server list in the Netbackup Admin Console (per http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO51780)

Netbackup and DFSR

Netbackup client v 7.5 does not work properly with Windows DFSR: it does not recognize archived bit in DFSR folders, which result all backups run as Full. Workaround: downgrade client to v.7.0.1 with couple of eebs (ie. hotfixes) installed (or v.7.1 – which I did not have a chance to test/confirm).

Journaling Rule for Exchange 2007 requires internal SMTP address

Creating Journaling Rule on Hub Transport that forwards emails to the external SMTP address (by creating Mail enabled Contact and configure Journaling Rule to send emails to that Contact) fails. To fix add internal SMTP address to Contact.

Symantec Enterprise Vault v9.0.x and Microsoft clustering

Failing over to the second node of Microsoft Cluster does not work if you use Enterprise Vault v.9.0.2. To fix this problem must upgrade to Enterprise Vault v.9.0.3.