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how to restore to Exchange 2010 Recovery Database?


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I'm trying to fugure out how to restore exchange 2010 database backups to a 2010 Recovery Database. Has anyone actually performed this task?

 

The proces is much different than restoring to the older Exchange 2003 Recovery Storage Group, which worked flawlessly for me in the past. Retrospect support has claimed that this is supported, but I don't see how this can be. Specifically, the recovery database requires you redirect the database and transaction log files with the backup program, since it's not tied to a specific database when you creat it in the gui. From my tests, there's not an option to "redirect" the database and log files to an alternative location. Symantec Netbackup/Backup Exec,even windows server backup have this option built right into the gui.

 

 

Here are some references on how to use the recovery database:

 

http://msexchangeguru.com/2010/05/23/exchange2010-recovery-database/

http://www.expta.com/2009/10/how-to-use-recovery-database-in.html

 

 

Any thoughts on this? Hopefully I'm overlooking something. Right now, the only use I can make of Retrospect is for a full recovery of the databases - overwriting the original databases. I'm runing a DAG cluster, so it's unlikely that I'll ever need to do a full recovery (knock on wood).

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Robin:

 

Thanks for the reply. I communicated with you in October 2011 and recieved a similar response from you and your engineering team:

____________

 

"We checked with the main engineer on the Retrospect team and asked him to verify if we support the Recovery Databases in Exchange 2010. This was his reply:

 

"Yes, we support them. A customer can create a recovery database and Retrospect will restore to it like any other database.

 

See "http://technet.micro...y/dd876954.aspx" for more info on RDB's."

 

So if the database exists, Retrospect will automatically restore into it. Which is basically the same way it used to work with the Recovery Storage Groups in older versions of exchange."

____________

 

This still doesn't make sense, as Exchange 2010 Recovery Databases are different than the older (Exchange 2007/2003) Recovery Storage Group. When you create a Recovery Database, it's not associated with an actual database like the old Recovery Storage Group was, so Retrospect won't know to redirect the restore. That's why the other backup vendors now have an option to select where the actual database and log files are restored to. This was a major change when Exchange 2010 was introduced. Please correct me if I'm wrong :-).

 

So I guess I was just looking for some real-world use of this with Retrospect from the user base. Since no one has chimed in, I'm assuming either no one has tried it or it doesn't work - either way isn't good. We've since deployed another solution for our primary backups (Veeam Backup and Replication) and just keep Retrospect for tape offload and secondary database backups in case Veeam fails.

 

That being said, I'm still a fan of Retrospect. If you improve this functionality in future releases (and add adequate support docs and tutorials) I'll be all ears...

 

Best,

Dave

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