Using Recovery Storage Group in Exchange 2007

There are some major and significantly good changes in the Exchange 2007 RSG in comparison to the Exchange 2003 RSG and most of them are as a result of the powerful power shell capabilities.

In this article I will describe, step by step, how to configure RSG and how to restore an item or a mailbox from backup.

Requirements and naming conventions

For the purpose of this article, I've used the following objects:

* SQA-LCS2005 - Exchange 2007 standard edition.
* Administrator - Source & destination mailbox on SQA-LCS2005 to restore the selected items from the RSG.
* Backup software - Ntbackup (C:'Backup'ExchDB.bkf – is the backup device that I used).

The process is divided into 4 parts:

1. Having a backup of the DB, a backup that contains the items that were deleted.
2. Create the RSG in the Exchange server.
3. Restore the relevant items / mailbox – Using GUI.

Optional: Restore the relevant items / mailbox – Using MSH.

1. Dismount and remove the RSG.

Having a backup of the DB, a backup that contains the items that were deleted

Note that the backup process usually should run every day automatically; therefore you may skip this step.

Open the Ntbackup software, mark the DB you want to backup and verify that the backup completed successfully:

Create the RSG in the Exchange server

1. Open the EMC (Exchange Management Console), from the Toolbox node, click on the Database Recovery Management:

1. Type the name of your Exchange server and Domain Controller server name and then click Next at the bottom of the screen:

1. From the Tasks options, choose Manage Recovery Storage Group and then click on the Create a Recovery Storage Group:

1. Select the Storage Group that you want to restore from and click Next:

1. Choose the location of the original SG files (DB + Logs).

1. Finish the RSG creation.

1. Verify that the RSG was created using the Exchange Management Shell (MSH):

Restore the relevant items / mailbox – Using GUI

Note that the Administrator mailbox, before the emails deletion, looks as follows:

1. The first step in this section is restoring the DB from the backup.Open the backup software and choose the DB you want, and marked it to restore:

1. Mark the next parameters, as shown in the next screen:

1. Verify that the restore completed successfully.
2. After the restore completed successfully, click the Merge or copy mailbox contents from the Manage Recovery Storage Group:

1. In the mounted Database in the RSG that you restored, click Gather Merge information:

1. The next screen gives you the ability to restore the whole mailbox or all the items in the mailbox from the backup in a simple way by clicking the Perform pre-merge tasks:

1. If you want to filter the items that you want to restore, like items from a specific range of dates, restore the items with a specific subject from all mailboxes to a specific mailbox – you should select the Show advanced Options:

Note: In this example I have chosen to restore all the items with the word TEST (the search is not case sensitive) to the Test_Folder folder in the Administrator's mailbox.

Search by subject (TEST) and copy all the items that will be found to the Administrator's mailbox:

Search the TEST word in the next mailboxes:

1. The result of the process, is shown in the next screen: