Appication Item Restore Wizards

[nguyent]

Hi,
How is good Appication Item Restore Wizards? I see Microsoft Exchange (BETA) and Microsoft SQL Server (BETA) Download. Are they ok to use now?
Thanks
Tan

[Alexey D.]

Hello Tan,

They are both ok to use, otherwise we wouldn't put 'em to download area Currently we are working on improvements so expect BETA status to be removed. Feel free to provide us your feedback, we would appreciate this. Thanks!

[nguyent]

Alexey,
I am going to try.
Thanks
Tan

[Gostev]

Please note that Exchange AIR is in BETA now, and currently supports Exchange 2003 only. We will release BETA2 soon that will add support of Exchange 2007. Exchange 2010 will be supported in release version.

SQL AIR beta looks fine, have not seen any complaints or issues reported so far.

AD AIR is GA and fully supported.

[nguyent]

Gostev,
No wonder I got error " <TBD> unable to access mailbox: The Remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden." when I tried to restore for EX 2007.
Thanks
Tan

[Louharle]

Hi all, any idea when BETA2 with Exchange 2007 support will be out??

[Gostev]

Most likely together with 5.0.1 by the end of this month... current build has the issue fixed already, but we would like to take some time testing it.

[MSoft]

I'm evaluating Veeam Backup & while trying to restore an Exchange 2003 item using U-AIR Exchange Wizard I get the following error:

<TBD> unable to access mailbox:
The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel

Any thoughts? Thanks.

[Gostev]

We have not seen this issue before, so this might be environmental. Please see here, might help:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7032 ... annel-soap

[MSoft]

Thanks Gostev, that errors has gone (certificate issue). However, I'm now getting the another error message:

<TBD>Unable to access mailbox: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request.

Any thoughts?

[Gostev]

What Exchange version are you using?

[MSoft]

The server is Windows 2003 SBS SP2 with Exchange System Version: 6.5.7638.1

[Gostev]

Could be because of SBS, I do not believe the beta was tested with SBS yet.

[MSoft]

Ok, thanks Gostev. I'll hang out for the next release - any idea when this will be?

[Gostev]

Most likely in Q1 next year.

[jharlow]

So for the rest of us (ex:Exchange 2010), we currently cannot restore a mailbox or mailbox item? Ouch!

[Gostev]

No ouch, you absolutely can... U-AIR is there and it works just fine, see here.

[jharlow]

Ok. I am having trouble getting this going...

Q: I am the only admin in a small environment. Do I have to use this workflow in order to be able to restore application items?
A: No, obviously we do not want you to spend time creating and approving lab requests for yourself. As backup administrator, you can simply right-click any VM in the running SureBackup job session, and start application-item recovery procedure immediately. Just make sure AIR wizards are installed on your Veeam Backup server.

I have a SureBackup job for Exchange that is in the "Ready" state. When I right-click the job, all I get is Stop Job (Start Job is greyed out, as it is already started), Realtime Statistics and HTML Reports, Delete and Disabled (greyed Out) and then Properties. I do not see Start Application Item Recovery.

Using Tools> Application Recovery requires approval, which even then, after a successful session, I am lost on how to actual retrieve any mail items. I approved the job but cannot seem to do anything with it to get the mail items. As quoted, I am the only admin.

At this point, this is the only thing holding me back on migrating to our users to Exchange 2010. I have to have a valid way to restore mailbox items...

Thanks

[Gostev]

Open Realtime Statistics, and right-click Exchange VM.
We have just finished Exchange 2010 migration btw

[jharlow]

Does not seem I can do a U-AIR from that dialog. Only Exchange (2003), SQL and AD. Since I am using Exchange 2010, that direction does not seem to be a valid option.

[Gostev]

Yes, Exchange 2010 is not supported by current beta version of the wizard at all.

[jharlow]

So I am back to the original, we have no solution for restoring mailbox items?

[Alexey D.]

You can use user-directed recovery, please review this post (Anton gave you the link above). See bullet 3.

[jharlow]

3. Open settings for Virtual Lab used by SureBackup job, and edit static IP mapping feature to map isolated IP address of required VM to some unused IP address in the production network.
4. Update production DNS and assign simple DNS name to the IP address chosen earlier, for example "exchange-yesterday".
With that in place, any user in the production environment will be able to access the server running from latest backup in the isolated environment by this DNS name. Any VMs published in such a way will be running until the next backup job is started. The next run of backup job will stop any linked SureBackup jobs, and perform backup. Then, SureBackup job will start using the newly created latest backup file according to its schedule, and again runs for the whole day until the next backup. Effectively, you will have a copy of application running from last night's backup always available to users behind easy to remember DNS name - enabling them to logon to familiar user interface and recover any data they need. This system will require no maintenance whatsoever.

I actually read that and sort of got somewhere. I have a SureBackup Job running. I know part of the problem is step three. I can log into the VLAB Exchange but it is marked Public with no internet access. I have the Production Network Connection configured with Obtain Automatically. Under the Network Settings, vNIC is set to Proxy Application of the gateway (192.168.0.1 and Mask as 255.255.255.0) Under Static Mapping Isolated IP is 192.168.254.215 (guessing this is the masquerade IP of the actual VLAB). I set the Access IP as 192.168.0.216 (not in use). The Static Mapping is something new to this. The previous configuration seems to work for another VLAB.

I understand the DNS part but lost when it comes to setting it up so that "users" can get to it. Mind you, I do not really need it where they can get too it, that is a plus, but I need as the admin a way to restore items they do delete. I am guessing that has to do with the Enterprise Management, which don't know about the rest of you, but that is not something I want users logging into...

[Gostev]

Isolated IP is IP address of Exchange server in the isolated network. In most cases, this is the same as production IP for this server. But this is definitely NOT a private masquerade IP address, that one is only used by SureBackup job uses to run the test. Access IP will be your public masquerade address for this Exchange server.

Could you please elaborate the second paragraph, it is a bit confusing - not sure I understand what you said the problem is.

[jharlow]

Sorry, this is all confusing to me. The FAQ kind of seems like it was written for someone that has used the software before. Just an observation...

I changed the Isolated IP to the same as the Production IP of this server. In this case, the server IP is 192.168.0.215. I do not know what the public masquerade would be. I know that the private masquerade is 192.168.254.[D]

The second paragraph is in relation to FAQ for Direct User section 4 (which I quoted). It states that the isolated IP address would need to be added to the site's DNS records for access. (This seems to counteract the"Isolated IP should be the same as the production IP") It states by adding a DNS record "exchange-yesterday", "enabling them to logon to familiar user interface and recover any data they need". I know how to create DNS records, but how would that alone enable them to logon to get their email? Is that assuming the "user" would use OWA to restore their emails? (which really is not a "restore" as they would save it as a web page). I am looking for a solution that is more geared to me, as the admin restoring their mail item back to their mailbox.

Maybe it would help by explaining I am migrating from Exchange 2003 using Symantec Backup Exec for Exchange. Right now when a user needs a mailbox item restored, I use Backup Exec to get the mailbox item, then restore to the original location.

[Gostev]

Sorry, this is all confusing to me. The FAQ kind of seems like it was written for someone that has used the software before. Just an observation...

You are right. If it would go into all basics, it would be size of our User Guide (200 pages). I figured there is little sense to create another one... I will be very happy if everyone who comes to this forum reads these 2 pages (which very rarely happens).

I changed the Isolated IP to the same as the Production IP of this server. In this case, the server IP is 192.168.0.215. I do not know what the public masquerade would be. I know that the private masquerade is 192.168.254.[D]

You chose the public masquerade (aka Access IP) yourself from unoccupied production network IP addresses. It is what your users will use to access VM running in virtual lab (DNS name corresponding to this IP address.

The second paragraph is in relation to FAQ for Direct User section 4 (which I quoted). It states that the isolated IP address would need to be added to the site's DNS records for access. (This seems to counteract the"Isolated IP should be the same as the production IP") It states by adding a DNS record "exchange-yesterday", "enabling them to logon to familiar user interface and recover any data they need". I know how to create DNS records, but how would that alone enable them to logon to get their email? Is that assuming the "user" would use OWA to restore their emails? (which really is not a "restore" as they would save it as a web page).

Exactly. The user will be able to retrieve 100% of the lost information without even having to contact you.

I am looking for a solution that is more geared to me, as the admin restoring their mail item back to their mailbox.

Exchange AIR wizard is exactly what provides for admin-driven restores, but it is in beta right now as you are already now.

[jharlow]

I breezed through the user manual. Obviously, I need to go through it again.

Got everything working with the IP address issues. Thanks for the help. And I am nearly at the point where a user could retrieve their lost email from a sure back job session, with only one problem.

Attempting to access OWA from the "yesterday's backup". The first attempt I received a DC error and the second an error 500. The first one I am not sure how to get around. The DC controllers at current are physical; therefore I cannot veaam it and set it up as part of of the Application Group. Being physical that means some how, I need to map (IP mapping?) a connection between the isolated network to the live network in a way that allows this one server to be accessible, correct?

Here is the error I received on the 500.
Exception
Exception type: System.Web.HttpException
Exception message: Request timed out.

I can tell that the VM and the session is extremely slow. I expect that is common since one would not want the VLAB using valuable resources (goes in line with the Instant Recovery being slow). But timing out slow, probably not so good

As far as E-AIR, any chance I can get on that closed-beta or alpha? That would be a lot better

Thanks for your help.

[Gostev]

You definitely at least 1 virtual DC to make this work (read-only aka branch DC should do fine, if virtualizing domain controllers is a concern). But you absolutely must have a DC running in the virtual lab, otherwise the Exchange will simply not work... there is no point to even try further.

You should troubleshoot the performance too, since vPower NFS performance is very decent. Could be some issues with backup storage performance. As I posted here before, with Veeam Backup running on decent hardware and storage, instantly recovered VM I/O performance can be even faster than one of real (production) VM running off lower-end SAN. And that was with backup file on non-local backup target (Linux server on 1Gb LAN), which is obviously less ideal than locally attached storage.

Concerning Exchange specifically, we just got results from 3rd party validation testing where they used to test instant recovery on Exchange 2010 with 200 mailboxes and 750MB data in each using Jetstress 2010... it was sustaining 250 transactional I/O per second. That is one update per mailbox per second! Definitely far from "timing out slow" and even more impressively, server start up time from backup was only 36 seconds. Full report will have all data about environment and hardware, so stay tuned.

You definitely need to troubleshoot performance because Exchange AIR will also be affected by timeouts if you do not address this.

[jharlow]

Unfortunately, until the first of the year, I do not have the resources for a DC on the Virtual server. That is primarily waiting the server that Exchange 2003 is on right now to build up another Virtual Server (that box will become our second one). Looks like a branch DC in read-only would be our only solution. Is that something that is explained how to do in the 200 page manual? or can you brief me on the process?

Performance -
Veeam is running on the same single Virtual Server with currently 5 servers (Exchange, SQL, IIS/ColdFusion, Veaam and a Web Monitoring solution). The drives are Direct Disk (Attached Storage) and are all 10K SAS drives in the normal RAID formation. Live Servers are running fine. No performance issues that I have notice. The actual Server is a Dell PowerEdge R710 with the 2 6-core Intel Xeon and 16GB of ram. Per Veam Enterprise Manager, Data is processed at 151 MB/s per sec. Each of the actual nightly jobs runing between 50 MB/s to 167 MB/s. The only time I see what appears to be a performance issue is when I bring up a backed up job in a VLAB or an instant server. The performance issue may be related to it trying to find a DC and it cannot or it may be something else. /shrug.