How to restore Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox from DPM Server 2010 Backup

DPM Server uses a combination of transaction log replication and block-level synchronization in conjunction with the Exchange Server VSS Writer to help ensure your ability to recover Exchange data.

In this post, I’m explaining the process of how to restore the Exchange Server 2010 mailbox from the DPM Server 2010 backup; when compared with exchange server 2007, we don’t have Storage Group concepts in exchange server 2010. We don’t need to create a recovery storage group and add the mailbox database to restore a mailbox; some changes are there in the mailbox recovery process.

In short we have to perform the following steps to recover a exchange server 2010 deleted mailbox from DPM 2010 backup.

1. Configuring the DPM Server 2010: Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox database to be added to the DPM Server 2010 Protection group and backup to be taken on regular intervals
2. Configuration on Exchange Server 2010: Create a Recovery Mailbox Database and set the allow overwritten by a restore to true for the recovery Mailbox Database and Mount the Recovery Database
3. Restoring the Mailbox from DPM Server 2010 backup in the DPM Console-> On the recovery tab, choose the recovery point for the Mailbox database on the protection group and recover the mailbox database
   
4. Restoring the mailbox In Exchange Server, Restore the mailbox to another user as a recovered folder or as your wish

Following give the detailed explanation of Recovering an Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox from a DPM Server 2010 backup

1. Configuring the DPM Server 2010:

Let us consider that Exchange Server is up and running and we installed the DPM Server 2010 and DPM agents are installed in the Exchange Servers.

First we have to add the Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox Database to the DPM Server 2010, Protection Groups. To create a protection group

Open the DPM Console -> Protection -> New Protection Group -> add the mailbox database -> Mention the Backup settings while create the Protection Group

 

Secondly make sure the recovery point are creating at the particular interval without any problem

 

Creation of Protection Group by adding the Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox and backup retention configuration are done

Configuration on Exchange Server 2010

We have to create a new Recovery Mailbox Database -> Open the properties of the recovery mailbox database and check the “This Database can be overwritten by a restore” – > Mount the recovery Database.

Note: In Exchange Server 2007, the recovery mailbox database won’t appear in the Exchange management console, where in Exchange server 2010 management console we can see it.

1. I created a New Recovery Mailbox Database using the below exchange management console

New-MailboxDatabase –name “RecoveryDB” –Recover

1. Make a mark on the “This Database can be overwritten by a restore”

1. Mount the Recovery Mailbox Database using the

Configuration that are to be performed at the exchange server level are done

Restoring the Mailbox from DPM Server 2010 backup:

In this scenario, I’m going to recover the Administrator’s mailbox content to Rajkumar’s mailbox in a recovered folder, where I’ll export\move the mailbox content from the folder to respective user.

Open the DPM Management Console -> Choose Recovery -> Expand the Protection Group -> Point to your mailbox database -> choose the recovery point and the recovery time -> open the Mailbox database -> Right click the user which you want to recover and click Recover -> review the information and completed the process.

Note: even if you are recovering the sing mailbox the entire Mailbox database will be restored from the DPM backup to Recovery Mailbox Database

Enter the fully qualified domain name of the exchange server and the newly created Recovery Mailbox database name in the below screen

You can close the above window and monitor the task in Monitoring tab of DPM Management console, the below screen shows the recovery process of the mailbox database

Once the mailbox recovery process gets completed, you can move over to Exchange server and restore the Mailbox using Exchange Management Shell.

Restoring the mailbox in Exchange Server 2010

Next step is to restore the mailbox from the Exchange Management Shell using the below mentioned Exchange Management Shell Command. I’m going to recover Administrator mailbox to reajkumar’s mailbox in the target folder Recovery

Restore-Mailbox –Identity Rajkumar –RecoveryDatabase RecoveryDB –RecoveryMailbox Administrator –TargetFolder Recovery

Restore-Mailbox – used to restore the mailbox from the backup

Identity – To Which mailbox the recovered Item to be stored

RecoveryDatabase – name of the Recovery Mailbox Database

TargetFolder – if you specify a folder, it will be created and the mailbox content will be restored in that folder

After running the Restore mailbox command, checks the status message of the mailbox restore, to get the confirmation of successful mailbox restore as shown in the below figure

 

If you login to the Rajkumar’s Mailbox the Recovery folder will be created and the Recovered Data of the Administrator mailbox will be recovered here and you can export or move the content as you need.

If you are facing any issue in performing the above steps, please leave a comment here, I’ll help you on this.