Recipe11.5.Restoring a Storage Group to the Same Server

Recipe 11.5. Restoring a Storage Group to the Same Server

Problem

You need to restore a storage group from backup media or files.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

Using the Exchange System Manager, navigate to the appropriate server and storage group.
Dismount the mailbox stores that you are going to restore by right-clicking each storage group and using the Dismount Store command.
Start the Windows Backup utility and ensure that it is set to Advanced mode.
Select the Restore tab.
Select your backup media or file.
In the left Ntbackup pane, find the backup media or file that contains the database copy you want to restore, then select it.
In the right Ntbackup pane, select the specific database that you want to restore.
Navigate down to the specific storage group that contains the mailbox store that you are going to restore and mark its checkbox, then click Start Restore.
The Restoring Database Store dialog box will appear. Select the name of the server you're restoring to. In this case, you're using the local server, which will already be selected by default. Next, enter a path for the location of the log and patch files. Ntbackup will put the files it restores here until it's ready to remount the restored database. Make sure that the directory you specify is on a volume with enough free space to hold the data you're restoring.
If the backup you're restoring is a full backup with no further backups after it, or the last backup in a series of differential or incremental backups, check the Last Restore Set and Mount Database After Restore options. If you still have to restore other backups after this one, leave both of those checkboxes blank.
Click OK.
If the Enter Backup File Name dialog box appears, fill in the name of the backup file you're restoring from, then click OK.
The Restore Progress dialog box appears. If any errors occur, you'll see them; when the restore finishes, you can dismiss the dialog with the Close button or view a detailed report of the restore with the Report button.
If you are restoring additional databases or if there are additional backup sets to restore, repeat steps 4 through 11 for each one. When you're restoring the last database, be sure to select the Last Restore Set and Mount Database After Restore checkboxes in step 8. The information store won't play back the transaction logs or remount the new database unless you do this.
Launch ESM and verify that the databases have been mounted properly (or mount them yourself if you didn't check the Mount Database After Restore checkbox).
Use ESM, Outlook Web Access, or Outlook to verify that the mailboxes or public folders are present and that the contents of the mailboxes are correct.

Discussion

This procedure is essentially the same as the one described in Recipe Recipe 11.4. The biggest difference here is that restoring a storage group will, by default, restore the transaction logs for all databases in the group. That's OK, because each transaction includes a unique identifier that allows the store to tell when a replayed transaction has already been posted. The biggest difference in these procedures is that restoring the entire storage group can take quite a bit longer.

Microsoft says that you should only perform one online recovery at a time. This is somewhat of a semantic issue, though. The actual restriction is that only one set of transaction logs can be replayed at a time. By specifying different temporary paths for different restore jobs, and making sure that the Last Restore Set and Mount Database After Restore checkboxes are off, you can reload multiple storage groupsbut then you'll have to manually replay the logs for those storage groups as described in Recipe 6.12.

Under no circumstances should you attempt to run multiple, simultaneous, online restore processes against message stores in the same storage group. Doing so can lead to the loss of data, and will make disaster recovery much more difficult in the long run.