New articles and whitepapers – Ontrack PowerControls and GroupWise migration with Quest

Hi,

Over the last few weeks I’ve worked on a few articles.

Two have recently been published.

The first is a migration whitepaper which Declan Conroy and I worked on together. We have previously written a whole series for Msexchange.org on the subject of GroupWise to Exchange migrations which can be found here.

This new piece takes a new look now Exchange 2010 is out and also discussed migration to BPOS.

The whitepaper can be downloaded here:

http://www.quest.com/documents/landing.aspx?id=11954&technology=&prod=&prodfamily=&loc=

In the second article Phil Bridge, MD of Kroll Ontrack, and I discuss some of the Pitfalls and pathways to migrate to Exchange 2010, with a particular look at which tools make sense for which types of migration.

The article is on the On Windows site here:

http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/Potholes,-pitfalls-and-pathways-to-success/5195/Default.aspx

Hope they are useful.

Cheers

Nathan

MMMUG August Event – Exchange Backup and SCDPM 2010

We’re on a roll! The August MMMUG event is being hosted by Tony Brown. and is being held in London on the 18th August 2010.

The subject of the meeting is Exchange backup and recovery and we have Microsoft’s Anthony Tyler talking about System Centre Data Protection Manager’s take on backing up exchange and Kroll Ontrack’s offering for recovery.

Kroll Ontrack is now celebrating its 25^th Anniversary as a global leader in the provision of data management solutions, specialising in data recovery, restoration, erasure and investigative products and services (www.krollontrack.co.uk).

Ontrack PowerControls software for Microsoft Exchange empowers users to search, recover, extract, restore and migrate Microsoft Exchange data (www.ontrackpowercontrols.co.uk).

Faced with increasing hardware and administration costs together with tighter budgets, organisations are seeking more cost-effective and efficient solutions to manage ad-hoc and routine Microsoft Exchange data requests. The core functionality of Ontrack PowerControls enables System Administrators to search, recover and restore entire .edb, .pst files and granular level items, whilst retaining data integrity.

Kroll Ontrack is pleased to be demonstrating the core functionality, features and application of this invaluable Microsoft Exchange administration tool.

Agenda:

18:00pm – 18:30pm Arrival
18:30pm – 19:30pm Ontrack PowerControls

• Company & Product overview
• Single item restore / recovery
• Intuitive searching
• Additional functionality
• Existing customers
• Live demo
• Extraction of Microsoft Exchange data from backup
• Browsing single / multiple .edb & .pst files, to single item level
• Searching across multiple .edb’s
• Compliance, investigations and legal requirements
• Restoration of data
• Reporting
• Hands-on demo
• Q & A

19:30pm – 20:00pm Refreshments
20:00pm – 20:45pm Microsoft DPM

• Why build DPM?
• Introducing DPM
• Demo – Protecting Data
• How Does DPM work?
• Demo – Rapid & Reliable Recovery
• Protected Platforms

20:45pm – 21:00pm Discussions & Questions on Exchange backup / recovery.

The event will be held at Kroll Ontrack’s flagship offices overlooking HMS Belfast and London Bridge:

• Kroll Ontrack Limited
• Tower Place East
• London EC3R 5BS
• United Kingdom

To Sign Up use the link below:

http://www.mmmug.co.uk/4-18th_August_2010_-_Exchange_backup_and_recovery

Recovery of data from Exchange 5.5

I had a question recently from a friend at Microsoft about a client who had got into a bit of a pickle!

They needed to restore and email from a mailbox which was 5 years old, long since deleted and on Exchange 5.5.

They did have a backup from the month end, but no idea whether the mail actually was still available or whether it was deleted before month end.

I did a little research and with the help of a couple of other Exchange MVPs Paul Robichaux and Kevin Ball I think I have a solution! We will of course not find out until I get some feedback from my friend.

So my thoughts were as follows:

One option to get this back (if it exists) would be to use Ontrack PowerControls. I’ve not done it for a while, but essentially, the idea is you recover the full database from tape and then Ontrack can open it and extract the relevant email. Of course the full tool is not free although there is a free version which might just have enough to do what is needed or at least to help you understand if the email is actually available!

http://www.ontrackpowercontrols.com/resources/trial-downloads/

The other option could be interesting! I’m not 100% sure but I believe that if you have Exchange 2003 (possibly later but not sure) you could create a database and then dismount and delete the files. Then put the recovered database (.edb file) in the same location and name it the same as the dummy database file you just deleted. At this point mounting the database should prompt Exchange to upgrade the structure of the DB to Exchange 2003 and allow you to see the mailboxes within. You would then need to create a user account and link the relevant mailbox to that account. (Thanks to Paul for the tip here)

So with a bit of luck and possibly some purchasing of tools, assuming the mail wasn’t deleted before the month end back, it should be possible to get it back!

Update:

Having posted something similar on Twitter I received feedback saying the recovery via Exchange 2003 won’t work! So I tested it!! – Yup I actually installed NTT4 and Exchange 5.5.

What I have found so far is that Exchange 2003, will create an STM file but then won’t mount the database. I believe that this is probably due to the fact that they are different organisations as I didn’t carry out a migration to Exchange 2003 instead just installing separate Orgs. I will update later with more progress!

Cheers

Nathan