Veeam Explorer for Exchange

[zak2011]

I want to thank the Veeam team for this really cool product. I have been trying this product whole day and really fell in love with it. Exchange restores from other backup product where once my all time fears due to the complexity of restoring databases . Today i have seen something totally different. Awesome product from Veeam. Its so simple and easy to install and use.
Thanks to the team at Veeam for making it really easy for end users. Keep it up!

[christiankelly]

Agreed VERY cool addition. One question. Will the final be Exchange 2007 compatible? Or will this only ever be an Exchange 2010+ product.

Thanks,

[zak2011]

From what i have understood is that the Veeam Explorer for Exchange is for Exchage2010 and further.
If any new comers would like to try it out,please send me a PM, i could send you the invite to try this great tool.

[Gostev]

Will the final be Exchange 2007 compatible? Or will this only ever be an Exchange 2010+ product.

We have considered adding Exchange 2007 support in the final release, but decided not to a few reasons, particularly because:
- Microsoft's mainstream support for Exchange 2007 has already ended back in April 2012
- R&D effort required to add Exchange 2007 is significant

Our discussions with a number of select customers also confirmed this to be a good approach - most customers appear to be on Exchange 2010 already, other are planning to migrate soon, and only a few said they will stick with 2007 for a while.

On the other hand, thanks to this decision we are now able to focus the same R&D resources on adding support for Exchange 2013, which release is imminent and appears to be highly anticipated by many customers.

[massimiliano.rizzi]

Hello Gostev,

another great addition from Veeam team (I can't wait to try it out).

Since Veeam Explorer for Exchange supports Exchange 2010, can you please confirm whether it will also support restoring from Exchange 2010 running within SBS 2011 Standard platform ?

Thanks and Regards,

Massimiliano

[dellock6]

If you're going to test it, you'll see it reads the EDB database file, so I think there is no difference where it comes from

Luca.

[foggy]

If you're going to test it, you'll see it reads the EDB database file, so I think there is no difference where it comes from

Exactly!

[blinguk]

This does seem like a great product. I am just in the process of recovering a mailbox from offsite tape backup.
Anybody know how to get the link besides getting an invite.
I do have a 6.1 Enterprise license with premium support but tried to contact support for the link but they don't have access.

Thanks

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Kanishk, try reaching Arun via PM, as it seems like he still has some invites left

If any new comers would like to try it out,please send me a PM, i could send you the invite to try this great tool.

[dellock6]

I've published my invite links directly on my blog post, I still have many invites left:

http://www.vuemuer.it/en/?p=3617

Luca.

[kewnev]

hi Luca,

Nice blog post. One thing you mentioned is that "you need Veeam Backup & Replication 6.1" and I think it's also worth mentioning that even having just the free edition installed is enough.

I personally think Veeam is going to get a nice number of new customers through this utility. Similar programs such as Quest Recover Manager for Exchange are pricey. The cheapest I could find when I was looking recently was Kernel Exchange Recovery http://www.kerneldatarecovery.com/excha ... overy.html $399. By installing the free edition of Veeam B&R, and Veeam Explorer for Exchange (VEFE) people get a free solution, even if they don't use Veeam B&R, because VEFE allows you to recover data from Non-Veeam sources. e.g. you could use Symantec Backup Exec (vomit) to restore the MDB and Log folders to a hard disk, and then use VEFE to granular restore items from it.
So everyone wins ... people get an excellent free tool, and Veeam gets B&R exposure.

I've published my invite links directly on my blog post, I still have many invites left:

http://www.vuemuer.it/en/?p=3617

Luca.

[ericshonebarger]

Is there a way to browse to the .EDB file inside the .VBK file so I don't have first restore the file from my nightly backup?

[Cokovic]

Just use the Windowds FLR Wizard to mount your backup and you can access your EDB under C:\VeeamFLR. So no need to extract it from backup.

[kewnev]

Is there a way to browse to the .EDB file inside the .VBK file so I don't have first restore the file from my nightly backup?

1. In Veeam B&R, go to "Backup and Replication" -> Backups -> and expand the backup job, to show the VMs that have been backed up
2. Right click on the backup for the Exchange Server VM, select "Restore Guest Files (Windows)". Follow the steps to choose the restore point that you want to restore Exchange data from.
3. When you click the Finish button, the "Backup Browser" will appear within a few moments.
4. Click on the "Explorer" button in the Backup Browser toolbar. This will mount the restore point for the VM into the C:\veeamflr\ folder.
5. You now run Veeam Explorer for Exchange, click "Add Store", and browse into the C:\veeamflr\ folder, and select the MDB and log files.

Oh also, if you are restoring from Hyper-V backups, make sure you run the following command at the administrator command prompt, otherwise you won't be able to mount the EDB/Log files . I'm sure you won't need to do this in the next release.

Code: Select all

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\VeeaM\Veeam Backup and Replication" /v EnableHvVdk /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001

[zak2011]

I am not sure why Veeam Explorer freezes..when i try to close it after restoring a mail or item.Do i need to remove the store before closing window. It takes a while and stops responding for a few secs.
Is this okay?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Arun,

Does it happen all the time when you try to close the UI? Does it stall just for 1-2 seconds or it freezes for a longer period? Could you please share your latest logs with our technical team?

Do i need to remove the store before closing window.

No, you do not need to dismount Exchange db before closing the UI.

Thanks!

[zak2011]

Hi Vitaliy,
Seems like its happening all the time. It stalls for something like a min and then its fine. Was just wondering if it actually takes this time to close.
Thanks.

[Vitaliy S.]

It is not expected to have a 1 minute freeze, so it's definitely worth investigating why you see this behavior.

[Gostev]

Please put [VEXbeta] in the support case summary when opening the case, so that it is handled correctly (as beta code does not get official support).

[zak2011]

Thanks Gostev will do that!

[mjkohn]

[merged]

I must be missing something. I read that you can take an Exchange backup and run the beta on that. I don't see how to do that when it is looking for an edb files and logs to base it upon. I see nothing under configure options and nothing in add store. How does one go about using a vbk file to restore from?
Thanks!

[Gostev]

You are missing weekly forum digest emails here is the blog with step-by-step process of using the beta:
http://virtualisedreality.com/2012/07/2 ... orer-beta/

[KiwiJJ]

Hi,
While testing I clicked on a mailboxes Sent Items folder and it came up with the following message:

"Folder contains a large number of icons, click here to view all items"

So I clicked "here" and then it started expanding the Sent Items but stopped and stayed at 57%

I then started to download what was in the Sent Items folder as a PST but then got the following error:

"JetError -1018, JET_errReadVerifyFailure, Checksum error on a database page"

cheers,

John

[Gostev]

Hi John, could you please supply us the debug logs by opening support case and putting [VEXbeta] at the beginning of issue summary.

Logs can be found at the following location:

Code: Select all

%ProgramData%\Veeam\ExchangeExplorer

[KiwiJJ]

Hi Anton,
Will do. Another issue is, after installing the product, when I went to export emails to a PST file, it said it wanted the 64 bit version of Outlook. Why can it not use the 32 bit version that is installed by the Office installation process by default.

cheers,

John

[scott.anderson]

Very impressed with the beta. Its a vast improvement in exchange object restore time compared to the traditional restore method.

The only thing really missing from this method of restore is the side by side view with the live Exchange, but I think most people can live with out that givent the ease with which you can browse and search the backup files.

I'm also assuming that its not going to be hooking into replication (given that some replication jobs have a much shorter scheduleing interval than most backups jobs),just backups?

Also is there any target release date we can look forward too?

[Gostev]

Will do. Another issue is, after installing the product, when I went to export emails to a PST file, it said it wanted the 64 bit version of Outlook. Why can it not use the 32 bit version that is installed by the Office installation process by default.

To write data to PST, we need MAPI. Redistributable MAPI is currently available in 32-bit version only. Exchange 2010 is 64-bit application, so we can only work with its data using 64-bit MAPI. The only way to obtain 64-bit MAPI today is to install 64-bit Outlook.

I did ask Microsoft (through our partner team) to review the possibility of providing 64-bit MAPI redistributable, but frankly no high hopes there, since MAPI is no longer their focus API (it got mostly replaced by Exchange Web Services, at least on the server-side).

[Gostev]

This should work with replicas as well, since we do provide file-level recovery from replicas since v1, and that's all this tool need - guest file system exhibited through our instant file level recovery session.

This functionality will be integrated into the next B&R release (Q4 2012).

[mjkohn]

Kewnev explained it right! This is way cool and it works very good. It looks like I can even restore items from the Public folders. BTW, our Exchange is 2010.

[mjkohn]

You are missing weekly forum digest emails here is the blog with step-by-step process of using the beta:
http://virtualisedreality.com/2012/07/2 ... orer-beta/

I went back in to the forums to see if anyone responded and saw how Kewnev wrote it up and it worked like a charm. This is a great product !