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