Using the Recovery Storage Group

If your organization cannot tolerate long unavailability periods for your mailbox stores, or you need to recover specific individual mailboxes, then you should give consideration to using the recovery storage group method of restoration. Recall that your backups must not have been created using the Volume Shadow Copy feature of Windows Backup in order to be restored via the recovery storage group. Exercise 14.3 details the process of restoring a backup set using the recovery storage group.

EXERCISE 14.3: Using the Recovery Storage Group

Click Start > Programs > Microsoft Exchange > System Manager.
Locate a server in the same administrative group as the server from which the backup occurred.
Right-click the server object in the System Manager and select New > Recovery Storage Group from the context menu.
Click OK to close the Recovery Storage Group Properties dialog box.
The Recovery Storage Group node appears under the selected server.
Right-click the recovery storage group you just created and select Add Database To Restore from the context menu. Locate the mailbox store that is to be restored using the Select Database To Recover dialog box, and click OK.
Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Backup.
On the Welcome To The Backup Or Restore Wizard page, click Next to continue.
On the Backup Or Restore page, select Restore Files And Settings and click Next to continue.
On the What To Restore page, select the backup set that represents the one you want to restore. Expand the backup set to locate the mailbox store and database logs in question, and click Next to continue.
Enter a temporary location for the log files. Also select the Last Restore Set option. Do not select the option to mount the database after the restoration completes. Click Next.
Click Finish to start the restoration action.
Wait for the restoration to be completed by Windows Backup. Click Close.
Open the Exchange System Manager if it is not already open .
In the Recovery Storage Group node, right-click the mailbox store that has been restored, and select Mount Store from the context menu. Should you receive an error, wait a few minutes and try again ‚ you must wait for the transaction logs to complete the replay process. You will see a warning dialog either way informing that you should restore the store before mounting it; click Yes to acknowledge the warning.
Click OK after the store has been mounted.
If desired, you can now delete the mailbox store from the recovery storage group and remove the recovery storage group from the server.