Now that I’m well under way with my Exchange 2007 migration I figured it’d be a good time to test the new Exchange recovery process.

To cut a long story short, it’s a long process as most of the functionality is via Powershell rather than the Exchange Management Console.

Anyway, here’s a quick guide.

1. Create the recovery storage group
This just creates an empty storage group for the recovery database, nothing fancy going on here.

[PS] C:\>new-storagegroup -LogFolderPath F:\Backup\Restore\Logs -Name ExchangeRestore -SystemFolderPath F:\Backup\Restore\Data -Recovery
Name                      Server            Replicated        Recovery
----                      ------            ----------        --------
ExchangeRestore           IMM-CORE-EXCH01   None              True
[PS] C:\>

2. Create a new recovery mailbox database
This creates a new empty database for NTBackup to restore to.

[PS] C:\>new-mailboxdatabase -mailboxdatabasetorecover "Mailbox Database" -storagegroup ExchangeRestore -edbfilepath "F:\Backup\Restore\Data\Mailbox Database.edb"
Name                 Server          StorageGroup         Recovery
----                 ------          ------------         --------
Mailbox Database     IMM-CORE-EXCH01 ExchangeRestore      True
[PS] C:\>

3. Restore the mailbox database via NTBackup
Now restore the mailbox database via ntbackup, remembering to tick the “this is the last backup to restore” option. Tick the check box not to mount the store after the restore completes.

4. Mount the restored mailbox database

[PS] C:\>Mount-Database -Identity 'ExchangeRestore\Mailbox Database'
[PS] C:\>

5. Restore the mailbox to a folder in another mailbox
I prefer to redirect the mailbox restore elsewhere, just so that I can look through it and decide what I want to do with the restored data. Below I’m restoring my mailbox to an existing mailbox called ‘Restore’.

[PS] C:\>Restore-Mailbox -RSGMailbox 'Dave Hope' -RSGDatabase 'ExchangeRestore\Mailbox Database' -id 'Restore' -TargetFolder 'Restore'
[PS] C:\>

6. Dismount the recovered mailbox database
We should now be done with our recovered mailbox database, so we can dismount it ready for removal.

[PS] C:\>Dismount-database -Identity 'ExchangeRestore\Mailbox Database'
[PS] C:\>

7. Remove the mailbox database
This removes the mailbox database from the storage group – it doesn’t actually delete the files.

[PS] C:\>Remove-MailboxDatabase -Identity 'ExchangeRestore\Mailbox Database'
[PS] C:\>

8. Remove the storage group
Since we shouldn’t need out recovery storage group (at least, until next time) we can remove that too.

[PS] C:\>Remove-StorageGroup -Identity 'ExchangeRestore'
[PS] C:\>

There, all done! Good luck with your Exchange restore.

At work I started off an exchange 2007 migration which has been long overdue. In the hope of providing some insight into migrations that others may still have to do, here are some notes.

Combining the CAS & Mailbox roles prevents OWA proxying
If like me you start off your Exchange migration by just adding a CAS role on a new Exchange 2007 server you’ll notice that it’ll proxy the webmail requests for your 2003 servers.

If you decide to add the mailbox role to that server, it stops doing that and just redirects clients. That’s fine internally, but if you have external people trying to access webmail it’ll just send them to https://exchange2003.nwtraders.local/exchange/

Microsoft have a workaround, which is simply deploying a standalone CAS role. Not a possibility for me, so my only option is to have two seperate OWA URLs.

Migrating AutoAccept sink resources to Exchange 2007 Rooms & Resources
Microsoft implemented booking in Exchaneg 2007, which i’m ecstatic about (no, i’m not being sarcastic). To migrate your legacy resources move the mailbox, and then run the following:

Set-Mailbox -Identity ConferenceRoom1 -Type Room
Set-MailboxCalendarSettings -Identity ConferenceRoom1 -AutomateProcessing AutoAccept

For more infromation, see here.

Annoying things they missed
Nothing’s perfect, but if Microsoft could add the followign in a patch/service pack i’d love them forever.

• Powershell cmdlet to manage calendar permissions – at present, you have to give yourself permissions to the mailbox, open it and set the calendar permissions. Yawn.
• Functionality to set default document favourites – Documents in OWA 2007 is great! but, with a non-technical staff it’d be nice to provide some common shares (their home directory for example) and perhaps our general document store

The Times Online had an interesting article on the network Cern is having to setup for the LHC. To summarise, they’re going to have an annual data transfer of 37,384TB of data (They said 56m CDs, so that’s just an estimate).

Their grid network has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data. The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 within the next two years.

Anyway, it’s well worth a read. I’d just love to get to play in their datacenter!