Re: The "unable to restore" problems

allow me to clarify...when I referred to a failure, I only meant that due to
circumstances beyond my control, I was not able to recover every single
piece of email...I was able to recover all but about 10 minutes worth of
transaction log files, owing to the timing of the crash, and a major problem
with SRDF replication...

--
Susan Conkey [MVP]



"Paul Womar" <{$PW$}@womar.co.uk> wrote in message
1hapy9s.13frc5nywwbalN%{$PW$}@womar.co.uk">news:1hapy9s.13frc5nywwbalN%{$PW$}@womar.co.uk...
Susan <sconkey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't think it's "an unnecessarily complicated and troublesome
process" at
all...I do restores on a regular basis, to recover the occasional email,
and
have had 5 situations, in nearly 10 years managing Exchange, where it
was
necessary to restore entire databases...in every instance but one, I was
able to recover every single piece of email, and had no problems
whatsoever.

Well come on, for a start you've just said that of the 5 times you've
needed to restore a database you've had one failiure, i.e. a 20%
failiure rate. That's not the kind of thing I could convince my bosses
to accept nor should they. We use Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003 is
obviously a bit better but lets take the example of a sinlge user
mailbox that needs recovering (ironically a complete server failiure
seems to be easier in relative terms). Basically if I use the
recommended online backup system then in order to restore a users
mailbox the procedure is (roughly, from memory):

Buy a server
Buy windows & exchange licences
Install windows and Exchange
Create new domain
Configure Exchange almost identically to the production system
Somehow connect it to the network archiving solution in the production
domain and fool it into talking to this server, hopefully without
knocking the production Exchange box off the network (Not entirely MSs
fault that bit)
Restore an entire mailstore
Run Exmerge to extract the data
Give user the PST or exmerge it into production

There are other soutions, all the ones I'm aware of have their
drawbacks, I'm pretty sure something approaching the above is actually
the recommened MS solution!

I appreciate that the structure of the database and SIS make restoring
small chunks quite difficult but disks/tapes are cheap compared to the
possible ramification of a long recovery period or permanent data loss.
If I could drop SIS and have a mailbox recovered by having a tool that
made one full pass through the tape for a mailstore then I'd ticking
that box without hesitation.

When you administer something as complex and critical as Exchange, my
feeling is that the most important part of that job would be to
familiarize
yourself with the process of restoring in the advent of catastrophic
failure...Machines do fail.

It's excellent advice however I do wonder how people in proper
enterprises do it. If you are a small enough shop to just have a few
tapes then fine, stick a drive on this spare Exchange box and go. I
can't go into too much detail here but we have an enterprise solution
that involves a dedicated server/tape library with capacity to back up
the 800+ servers servers we have and it's a fully automated self
maintaining 'closed' system. If you can find an easy risk free way to
get this test Exchange box speaking to speak to that production backup
system, without impacting the production Exchange systems then I think I
know a company who'll pay you a tidy sum! I'm sure it's not all MS's
fault but it's still a nightmare.

This statement: "Mark my words: You can never
back and restore that damn thing directly, no, you must learn, run
hundreds
of commands, read tons of articles, balh balh" is completely false,

Well, the word never obviously makes it false. However there are a huge
number of documents describing what to do in various situations to try
and get your restores to work. Compare the amount of data MS give you
about exchange restores compared to restoring a folder full of files.
Yes I know that there are plenty of good reasons why the former will
have to be more complicated but I don't think it needs to be as
complicated as it is. For example if I want to restore one of our
crusty old Notes servers, I can just pull the nsf files off via a normal
backup app and dump them into the right directory, easy. Yeah it has
other downsides but they've hade the important bit easy.

and I
have every confidence that I could restore all my Exchange data, for all
15,000 of my users, if it were necessary....

Well I think only about 12,000 of our users are on Exchange at the mo
and yes, I'm pretty confident that if I went in tomorrow and and the SAN
disks had been wiped then we could bring it all back as quickly as the
LAN would let us. A total loss is quite simple - Rebuild & Restore.
Annoyingly it's the failiures of part of the system that tend to be the
trickiest to recover from.
--
-> The email address used in this message *IS* valid <-


.

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