Mail deleted between backups

[knuter]

Hi,
I've recently started using Veeam Explorer for Exchange and it's great, except for mail that are hard deleted in the time between backups. Those mails I can't seem to find?
I can access them through Recover Deleted Items in Outlook, so I know they're still stored in there, but how can I get Veeam Explorer for Exchange to find them?

[foggy]

Knut, Veeam Explorer does not search items in Recover Deleted Items folder. However, you can use alternate ways to restore them. For example, Instant Recovery to bring the whole VM online and access those items via Outlook or recover the database file and mount it to live Exchange server.

[knuter]

Thanks, is this by design from Veeam so one may request this possibility as a feature in the future? Or does Exchange itself do something to make it impossible?

[foggy]

This is by design and can be filed as a feature request.

[Gostev]

Are you talking about emails which are both created AND deleted between backups?

[knuter]

Yes, emails created and deleted between backups, for example when a user receive a mail and somehow accidentally hard delete it instead of opening it, and then don't discover it before it has expired from Recover Deleted Items. Those users manage to do the weirdest things...
One solution would be to have the same retention in Recover Deleted Items as the retention for the backup job, but since the data already is in the backup easy access to it would be nice.

[Gostev]

Seems like general RPO talk to me, however I would agree that leveraging Deleted Items would have helped. On the other hand, there is nothing preventing users to restore required items from Deleted Items themselves, so would they even ask admins to perform a restore? I actually just used this functionality in anger last week

[tsightler]

I think the point is that they may have "Deleted Item Retention" configured for 7 or 14 days, but they may very well keep backups for much longer, 30-60 days is quite normal. If VEX had the ability to access these "Deleted Items" the admin would be able to restore these items from any backup even if the deleted item retention had expired. This is also important functionality from an "eDiscovery" perspective since otherwise these messages would not be found with the VEX tool.

I suppose you could probably still do this with a virtual lab and U-AIR even now.

[knuter]

Spot on Tom. So when a user needs to recover that email he quickly hard deleted 20 days ago, he is not able to recover it himself from "Recover Deleted Items", but we need to recover it for him. The easiest and fastest solution would be if we could use VEX on an backup 19 days ago.
I know, cases like this happen rarely, but we like to plan for the odd cases as well

[johnlong]

Hope I'm not breaking forum etiquette by replying to an older post. However I have interest in recovering emails from "Recover Deleted Items" in a users mailbox.

There is a 3rd party app that will load the exchange database and allow you to browse a folder called "Recoverable Items" folder which is the "Recover Deleted Items" storage location. There is a sub folder of the "Recoverable Items" folder called "Deletions" It looks like that is where all the deleted items go if you have recovery enabled.

The problem is the "Recoverable Items" folder is one level above where Veeam Explorer for Exchange lets you browse. It would be nice to see the ability to browse that folder in a future release.

[Gostev]

No need for 3rd party app actually, users can do it directly from Microsoft Outlook (or Outlook Web Access).

[barrnunn]

Exchange 2010 has a Deleted Items recovery option that allows users to recover items they have emptied from the Deleted Items folder for a period of time set up in the Exchange server. We have set that for 14 days, and it works fine, but what I am wondering is how I would be able to get to them from a Veeam backup taken of the Exchange server. I was not able to find any way to do it in the Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange tool. Is there some other procedure to do this with the Veeam Backup & Recovery Tool on Hyper-V?

[Gostev]

No, not today. Why do you need to do this, if any user can just restore emails from there using Outlook or OWA?

[barrnunn]

Yes users can undelete anything they deleted for the last 14 days, but what about prior to 14 days? Also, unless I am taking and keeping backups every second, users can delete and purge a message in the same day they received it and it will never appear on a backup. If the user doesn't realize they needed the deleted item within 14 days, there is no way to retreive it. If I was able to restore items from the purged deleted folder, I would be able to restore items the user may have deleted, accidentally or intentionally, using Veeam Explorer for Exchange. I guess that is where an email archival product would be able to assist, but it would be nice to be able to get to the purged deleted items that are in my backed up Exchange database.

[Gostev]

Makes sense, thanks for clarification. I will discuss this feature with the project lead.

[johnlong]

Just to follow up on this. The scenario I face was that someone deleted emails and emptied them from the trash the same day the email was received, between veeam backups. Veeam does backup the "Recoverable Items" folder you just can't see it using veeam explorer for exchange. So when time passes and the email is purged from the "Recoverable Items" folder you have to go to a backup to recover the email. Which is why I used a 3rd party app to restore emails that were deleted and emptied, but in the recover deleted items folder, "Recoverable Items".

Simple solution, allow veeam explorer for exchange to view folders one level up from where it can view them today.

[Gostev]

We have completed the research and it is quite doable, but still not as simple as it seems, so we've postponed this feature to the next minor release following 7.0

[wonderboy]

I think the main issue is that Exchange users are *allowed* to delete stuff from the "recover deleted items" folder despite a retention policy being set by the administrator. This is just terrible design and implementaion by Microsoft.

Retention policy should mean that users CANNOT completely remove mail from the system, but the case just now means that they can. Ridiculous situation that is completely illogical from an admin persepective, and MS seem unwilling to fix it.

[barrnunn]

We have completed the research and it is quite doable, but still not as simple as it seems, so we've postponed this feature to the next minor release following 7.0

Sad that it won't make it into V7, but glad that at least it is being seriously looked into as an enhancement.

[johnlong]

I think the main issue is that Exchange users are *allowed* to delete stuff from the "recover deleted items" folder despite a retention policy being set by the administrator. This is just terrible design and implementaion by Microsoft.

Retention policy should mean that users CANNOT completely remove mail from the system, but the case just now means that they can. Ridiculous situation that is completely illogical from an admin persepective, and MS seem unwilling to fix it.

Most users are too, what's the word for it... not stupid, but just don't know how to access the recover deleted items option much less delete emails from there. I'm not sure what you would do in that instance.

Having access to it using veeam explorer for exchange would benefit me, not greatly but it would be nice for me to have.

*edit
I guess to protect your company against users permanently deleting emails you would need some type of appliance that archives all emails or enable journaling.

[mrt]

Knut, Veeam Explorer does not search items in Recover Deleted Items folder. However, you can use alternate ways to restore them. For example, Instant Recovery to bring the whole VM online and access those items via Outlook or recover the database file and mount it to live Exchange server.

what if i used VEX to restore the mailbox back to live Exchange, then used Exchange to export the restored mailbox to a pst. Would the dumpster items then be present in the Exchange-generated pst?

[Gostev]

VEX does not provide "mailbox recovery" option.

[foggy]

If you are talking about restoring the entire mailbox by selecting all of its contents, then those items will not be restored since they are not displayed in the VEX UI and hence cannot be selected for restore.

[northrundicandus]

Put me down as another customer who would like this functionality added. Being able to search ALL the folders in a saved information store, including the "Recoverable Items" folder, would add a lot of extra value to Veeam Explorer for Exchange.

[Gostev]

This has been implemented, and should be a part of the 2014 release.

[spock]

Hi,

Does anyone know if the "Recoverable Items" folder recovery feature has been added to the latest release?

Thanks in advance!

[foggy]

Tobin, it will be added in the next major release scheduled for this summer.

[homerjnick]

Which release is that? Now it is summer?

What about the ability to search all EXCHANGE backups for a specific email? Is there any way Veeam can index each item within Exchange to the Catalog?

[Gostev]

Now it is autumn, because since last post we have decided to skip the originally planned minor release, and are going straight for the major release.

We do not have a feature of searching all EXCHANGE backups for a specific email, you can only search specific restore point. Normally, this would be the restored point created at the moment when legal hold was requested by the court.

[homerjnick]

Thanks for the update...

As for Legal Hold I'm not interested in that...I'm more interested in making it easier for my first line support to restore items for end-users. I want a quick way for support to be able to search through Veeam for an email and restore it. Our end users will sometimes request an email be restored and they will only have a vague recollection as to when the email was received/deleted and it is beyond the Deleted Item Cache retention.

In our setup prior to Exchange 2010 with our Exchange 2003 sever we used the Exchange CommVault agent to backup mailboxes and this was searchable for keywords.

Whilst Veeam can restore Exchane 2010 items if we cannot search through multiple backups to find the Exchange item we require then Veeam doesn't really lend itself to be the primary tool to handle the restoration of Exchange items.

What do other Veeam customers use for Exchange 2010 mailbox restores?