Veeam Explorer for Exchange

[Xaneth]

Just a note about VEX. I have been working with Veeam for quite some time now, and have used Exchange UAIR to restore individual email, etc. At one point in time, UAIR only supported Exchange 2003 and 2007 (if memory serves), but not Exchange 2010. After a few releases it now supports 2010 thank goodness. I've been running B&R 6.0 Enterprise, and was pleasantly surprised to find that VEX existed in 6.5, so I upgraded. After upgrading and trying to use VEX, I was very disappointed to find that it does not have Exchange 2007 support, only Exchange 2010!!! This tool is exactly what I wanted to use, because I had specific mailboxes that I needed to turn into PST files rather quickly, and it definitely looks like the ticket.

Instead I had to try and use SureBackup, which was a complete failure on a 2 year old backup I had. The VM would not even come up in safe mode, so I had no way of restoring the usual way with B&R. I had to do a file level restore of the EDB file and transaction log files, run the eseutil against the DB, mount it in an RSG, use Exchange Powershell to restore mailboxes into a folder on my mailbox, and then export to PST through Outlook. This whole process took an entire day to accomplish because I had to restore the entire DB and move files around, much less using Powershell to restore mailboxes.

I was told by support that support for Exchange 2007 is coming in a future release, and I sincerely look forward to having to spend less time restoring individual items such as this.

[foggy]

Jason, sorry to upset you, but Veeam Explorer for Exchange will never support Exchange 2007.

[Xaneth]

Well that sucks. Just made my B&R solution that much less effective. Great. I wish I had the name of the rep I talked to yesterday, he was dead wrong when he told me that.

[Xaneth]

After spending all day Tuesday restoring EDB files and transaction log files, I was highly anticipating 2007 support. It really sucks to hear this news, because our small company is not in the market to upgrade our SBS 2008 solution any time soon. The SureBackup procedure failed miserably as well, as I couldn't even get my backup up and running in even safe mode. What could have taken a matter of minutes took me over 12 hours due to this inconvenience.

[dahund]

HMM, firstly i was impressed by VEEAM and how easy it is to configure etc. but when i wanted to utilize exchange explorer I was surprised to see that it only supports exchange 2010 and 13, even though when buying the software i explained my needs and environment (exchange 2007) to Veeam salesperson.

Now my question is will this become a possibility in the future, or can i tweak it such that i can do it anyway?

[veremin]

Hi, Allan.

In fact, there are no plans to support this platform in future versions of Veeam Exchange Explore.

However, it doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to restore granular Exchange 2007 data. In order to do it, you can either use Universal Application Item Recovery (U-AIR) or put into use Instant VM Recovery in conjunction with your outlook client.

Thanks.

[dahund]

Thx for reply, do you have some documentation for restoring exchange data as you suggest?

[foggy]

Allan, the process is documented in the U-AIR User Guide available for download at the product home page.

[veremin]

As to using Instant VM Recovery in conjunction with Outlook client, the procedure should be as following:

Start your Exchange from the required backup file, then, connect to it through Outlook client, and copy necessary items into PST file. After that, this file should be imported into production Exchange, again via Outlook.

Thanks.

[Nikolay]

Hello,

I'm trying to restore user's Exchange 2010 SP2 mailbox items via Application items restore wizard in Veeam B&R 7.0.0.771
Add store dialog says me: "Online Exchange backup detected, log replay is required" and when I'm trying to specify Logs folder it says "The specified folder does not contain valid logs".
It is possible to mount just EDB file without replaying log files in this case?

Thanks,
Nikolay

[foggy]

Nikolay, are you manually adding EDB file restored via FLR? In this case, on the first opening, database is always in a dirty state and logs replay is required. If you're positive you're specifying the correct logs folder, I recommend contacting technical support for closer investigation. Thanks.

[Nikolay]

Yes, I'm trying to add EDB file from FLR mounted folder. I'm not really sure that the logs folder I'm specifying is correct one because Exchange VM backup was made without transnational logs virtual disk (due to incompatible disk type - RDM in physical mode). In this case - is there any chance to mount such dirty edb database file without logs at all?

Thanks,
Nikolay

[foggy]

You should repair the database first to bring it into a clean state (using eseutil). After that it could be open in Veeam Explorer for Exchange.

[Nikolay]

Thanks a lot, Alexander!

[foggy]

You're welcome. Let me know if you need any further assistance.

[ianbutton1]

Just a note for info - especially for anyone wanting to recover Exchange items from an mailbox database restored from a non-Veeam backup. Veeam Explorer for Exchange is a godsend!
We have just migrated our Exchange from on-premise (backed up by Data Protector) to Office365. Backups of the old mailbox databases can only be restored using DP, but VEX is the perfect solution for navigating the restored database and recovering the mailbox/folder/items to a PST file. Thank you, Veeam!