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Dag Staale @ april 08, 2008 21:54 ::
:: 491 Visninger
Question – Alf Flowers
In "Protecting Exchange Server with System Center Data Protection Manager 2007", on page 22, "Recovering a Mailbox", the instructions indicate that a single mailbox can be recovered from an Exchange storage group using DPM 2007. However, in practice this is not so. You have to recover the entire storage group. Too, you have to rely on Exchange Server's dopey recovery tools to finish the job. If you want the latest mailbox restore, even most of those options are not available. Why does MS keep touting DPM as THE solution for Exchange Server recovery?
We purchased On Track Power Controls for mailbox recovery before we purchased DPM 2007. It allows us to recover even separate messages within a mailbox to any user's mailbox with no restrictions. All of the marketing from MS suggested that DPM 2007 would be able to accomplish all of this without having to rely on other products.
File recovery of DPM 2007 is outstanding. SQL Server recovery is outstanding. Can we please get straight answers from MS on these questions:
- Why does DPM 2007 drop the ball when it comes to Exchange Server mailbox and message recovery?
- Why does DPM 2007 rely on Exchange Server's kludgy tools to finish the job?
- Why does MS hype the abilities of DPM 2007 as to mailbox recovery?
- Did anyone at MS raise their hand an suggest that some of these claims could
perhaps border on false advertising? Do the Exchange Server team and the DPM
team hate each other?
- Why is it that third party applications can do all of this, and MS can't?
This is not the first time this issue has been brought up in this discussion group. However, each time it has been brought up, none of these questions have been fully addressed by MS staff. So, please MS staff, give us some straight answers to these questions. Thank you in advance!
Reply - Wokkeltje
Every selfrespecting backup software can restore single mailboxes except MS. Does this mean they outsource their exchange development?
I also use DPM on our internal environment, but the Exchange incompetence is the reason why we don't install DPM at our customers.
We use the recover delted items function of Exchange to store deleted items for 30 days, this solves the problem a bit, but not all.
I also want an good reaction from MS why they tell that it is possible to recover 1 (ONE) mailbox to a recover store. Now I need gigabytes free space to recover a single mail of 1KB. Mayby MS has shares in storage compays.
Reply – Asim Mitra [MS]
Hi Folks,
Recovering an individual mail or recovering a mailbox without the use of the recovery storage group would involve ignoring Exchange best practices and using processes which are not supported by the Exchange team. While we realize that some of our competitors have chosen to reverse engineer the Exchange database in an attempt to offer mailbox or even individual mail restores without the use of the recovery storage group, these solutions are not fully supported by Exchange.
The DPM Exchange recovery process, on the other hand, is fully supported and relies on standard Exchange tools to recover a mailbox.
Given that we are building an Microsoft solution for Exchange protection, it's simply not an option for us to ignore Exchange best practices, or perform any function that might cause data corruption or impact our customers' support options from Microsoft product support services.
That said, we've heard some very clear feedback on this subject and are exploring ways to build a more automated restore process which features more granularity. This may simply involve automating more steps in the current workflow using PowerShell which both DPM 2007 and Exchange 2007 support, or it may involve working with the Exchange team to develop a process which is supported and more programmatic.
We can say with certainty that we will not do anything that is not fully blessed by the Exchange team to ensure the best possible satisfaction and supportability of our customers' Exchange environments; and that we will be working to make the Exchange supported process easier in the future.
Thanks,
Asim Mitra [MSFT].
Reply - Alf Flowers
Hi Asim. I really appreciate your reply. Also, I hope that this message came across as a request for information, not as an attack.
I agree with and appreciate the need to work within safe boundaries. However, I'm not sure that it applies in this case.
One thought: Like others here, we see the ability of DPM to enumerate the content of a storage group. Since DPM can enumerate the mailboxes, why can it not export to a PST file, or some other "safe" medium? That would allow the user to access the file(s) via a client.
Another idea: EUR looks like a good way for a user to retrieve his own lost files. Why can't the Exchange/Outlook user have that same mechanism with DPM? It's his mail. It's his mailbox. How could that possible be "unsafe"? I can see this being a bit more involved than other ideas.
How about this: An account in Exchange designated as a "recovery account". DPM would interact with this account, and allow any mailbox or its content be recovered to this account. Better still: Allow the direct recovery of emails back to any user within the Exchange system. Create a "Recovered Items" folder and load everything back to that folder. The user could then do with
them as desired.
The product we use now allows me to open a storage group, enumerate the content, connect (using mapi) to an active exchange server, restore mailboxes or their content to any active mail account. What is "unsafe" about this? How is this "unsupported"? Why would this scenario be unsuitable for DPM?
From my perspective, the limitations I see are not as much with DPM as they are with Exchange. The Exchange mail recovery solutions look like stop-gap fixes which by now should have evolved into mature (read: easy for the end user) applications. Exchange is the first application that I have ever used that I have actually become afraid of. Like a giant house of cards, one little problem and the whole thing comes crashing down. I know - one corrupt log file cost me days of recovery time and lost emails. Is that the same guy who implemented the Windows registry? Let's hope he's not still on the payroll. Sorry, I digress...
I believe that DPM is one of the best recovery applications to hit the market in a long time. It has already paid for itself here. Please, keep the ball rolling and don't let it stop with that disappointing Exchange recovery solution.
If the Exchange team would like to correct any misconceptions I may have regarding Exchange, I would be happy to hear them out.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Reply – synergy/dbo
Just adding my $2 worth (2 cents not being worth anything at all any more). I'd like to add my second to Alf's comments. I've been very impressed with DPM2007 until today when I started to look at the mailbox recovery capabilities. This morning at one of my client sites, a user inadvertently closed a very long draft email that he had of course meant to send and failed to save a copy. With the current backup software we're using (Backup Exec), we were able to restore a copy of that draft from last night's backup in about 10 minutes, with no performance impact on the Exchange server. Testing
this process on my test server with a very small (3GB) private mailbox store, I'm looking at about a 1-hour process to recover a single email. Plus I saw a definite performance impact on my Exchange server while the restore process was running. The DPM Exchange recovery process might be great for recovering an entire mailbox store in the event of a disaster where the server or Exchange crashed and the store was corrupted. However, for the type of situation we face on a regular basis of needing to restore a single email or small group of emails that someone has lost through user error, this process is completely unacceptable.
I really urge the DPM development group to take a careful look and do whatever you can to streamline this process and make it comparable in terms of effort to the common 3rd party backup software that is your competition out in the real world.
Reply – MILO
So let get this straight. Page 24 of "Protecting Exchange Server Data With System Center Data Protection Manager 2007" published "March 2007" is completely false? Page 24 walks the reader through the process of recovering a individual mailbox. I've tried, it doesn't work!!?? The only option I have is to "Copy to a network folder" and when launched that option starts the recovery of the
entire store NOT THE INDIVIDUAL MAILBOX?????
Please explain.
TIA
Reply – synergy/dbo
Yes, that process restores the entire mailbox store to an Exchange Recovery Group. Then, you can restore an individual mailbox by exporting it using Exmerge to a .PST and then re-importing or copying the contents to a mailbox in the live Exchange mailbox store. So, technically you CAN recover an individual mailbox, but the process is needlessly cumbersome and takes an incredibly long time to accomplish. That's why there are a number of posts on this forum complaining about this process and pointing out that in comparison to the processes offered by 3rd party backup software, it's
totally unacceptable.
Reply – Milo
like to say it's funny but it's not at all funny, it's beyond aggrovating!!!! MS you need to address this NOW. Don't give us the drink the koolaid BS, just fix it. Not in 6 months, NOW. I paid for a product that works as stated in your documentation!
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