How to restore an individual Exchange Mailbox using Exchange Recovery Storage Group?

Unknown 21:45
Recovery Storage Group (RSG) is a specialized storage group in Exchange 2003 that helps Exchange administrators in restoring a single mailbox or a single item from a backup using the simplest backup software like Ntbackup. Using RSG feature, Exchange administrators can mount a second copy of a mailbox database (a mailbox database restored from backup) to extract data from one or more mailboxes in the respective databases without affecting the production databases. While mounting a copy of a mailbox database to RSG, administrators can extract data from the mailbox and can then merge it with another mailbox located in a mailbox database in a production Storage Group. Also, the data can be extracted and copied to a specific folder in another mailbox.
After restoring a mailbox store to the recovery storage group, use Exmerge.exe tool to move the recovered mailbox data from the recovery storage group to the regular storage group. Users can execute following Exchange Management Shell commands in order to merge a recovered mailbox using the RSG:
  1. Exchange Management Shell command to create a new RSG, in case an RSG does not exist already:

new-storagegroup –Server <Server_Name> -LogFolderPath <path_to_Logfiles> -Name <RSG_Name> -SystemFolderPath <Database_Path> -Recovery

  1. Exchange Management Shell command to add a recovery database to the RSG:

new-mailboxdatabase –mailboxdatabasetorecover <Database_Name> -storagegroup <Server_Name>\<RSG_Name> -EDBFilePath <Database_Path>

  1. Exchange Management Shell command to set the recovery database to allow overwriting:

Set-mailboxdatabase –identity <Server_Name>\<RSG_Name>\<Database_Name> -AllowFileRestore:$True

  1. Exchange Management Shell command to mount the recovery database:

mount-database –identity <Server_Name>\RSG_Name>\<Database_Name>

  1. Exchange Management Shell command to recover the mailbox of an existing user to an existing mailbox:

Restore-mailbox –identity <User_name> -rsgdatabase <Server_Name>\<RSG_Name>\<Database_Name>

A few examples of Exchange Management Shell commands to recover user data from an RSG:
  1. Exchange Management Shell command to recover a mailbox from RSG database to currently used mailbox ‘Alex Brown’:

Restore-Mailbox –identity ‘Alex Brown’ –RSGDatabase ‘RSG\mailbox database’

  1. Exchange Management Shell command to recover all mailboxes in the RSG to their respective active mailboxes:

Get-MailboxStatistics –database ‘RSG\Mailbox Database’ | restore-mailbox

  1. Exchange Management Shell command to restore a mailbox in an RSG into different active mailbox:

Restore-Mailbox –RSGMailbox ‘Alex Brown’ –RSGDatabase ‘RSG\Mailbox Database’ –id ‘Michael Clarke’ –TargetFolder ‘ABrown Email’

  1. Exchange Management Shell command to recover end-user data between two dates:

Restore-Mailbox –RSGMailbox ‘Alex Brown’ –RSGDatabase ‘RSG\Mailbox Database’ –id ‘Michael Clarke’ –TargetFolder ‘ABrown Email’ –StartDate ‘01/12/13’ –EndDate ‘18/12/13’

Restrictions while using Recovery Storage Groups in Exchange Server 2007:
  • The Server on which the data originated must belong to the same Active Directory forest as the Server that you are using to recover the data.
  • Recovery Storage Groups could only be used to recover mailbox data; they can’t be used to recover public folder data.
  • Even though Exchange Server 2007 allows creating upto 50 different stores per Server, but only one Recovery Storage Group could be created.


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