Exchange Compare with Production 9.5 Update 4

[YouGotServered]

Hey forums!

I am excited that the "Compare with Production" feature made its way to the Exchange explorer, but I don't think I have the configuration right.

Scenario:
We host customer's data in our own private cloud. It is all VMware based and we do our application aware processing over VIX (networkless). When I try to do a compare with production, by default, it populates the "Domain" with my company's domain, so I change it to my client's (.local) domain. I then click the "Use the following account" button, and enter in admin credentials for the customer's domain. When I hit next and try to verify, I get "The LDAP server is unavailable". I'm assuming that it can't reach my client's DC (also in our datacenter). I have tried their .local internal domain, their .com email domain, and even the FQDN of their Exchange server, just for fun.

I have read through the guide (https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... l?ver=95u4), and it says to "Specify a Global Catalog server", but I can't find that option in the Veeam Explorer for Exchange. Even if I could do that, would it work over VIX, or would this require a network connection to the DC?

Please note that I can restore an item to a mailbox on the Exchange server just fine with no issues, so I suspect my networking and setup is up to par, but please let me know if I'm wrong.

Thanks!

[Andreas Neufert]

We assume here that DNS can reach the exchange domain and CAS Server as well as the domain controller for additional Exchange infrastructure lookups.
The mail restore later is done by Exchange EWS on port 443.

[YouGotServered]

Andreas, thank you for the response. So does this mean that there is no way to do this in an environment where there is no network communication to the VM over the network? I was hoping it could operate the way the application level restores do (which I assume would be over VIX in our case).

[Andreas Neufert]

Hi Cory, I am sorry but there is no networkless way to write into an application. Over VIX you can restore files, but for Exchange we need to access the server from outside and interact with other servers (AD - CAS - DB) which is not possible from what Windows UAC would allow us to when we come in by VIX.

[YouGotServered]

Thanks Andreas. While I believe what you are saying, I can't say I fully understand it.

How is it possible that I can write a single mail item directly back into the production email server from the Veeam explorer, yet I can't read similar data to do a "comparison" operation?

Thanks for your help.

[Andreas Neufert]

I am just guessing here.

You define the CAS Server manually or by email domain detection logic (which would work in many cases on public internet DNS systems as well - autoconfigure). Then in most of the cases customers have an internet facing CAS Server (for OWA access) and we use Exchange Web Services to restore the mail over port 443.

The reason why comparing do not work is that you need additional access which is usually only the case if you are within the customer network environment.

[YouGotServered]

Understood. Thank you for the information.