Recover Data - Exchange Mailbox/Public Folder Archiver Agents

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Overview

Message-Level Recovery Options

Recovering All Protected Mail

Recover a Message from Outlook or OWA

Find and Recover Messages in Outlook

• Configuring Single Sign-On (SSO) for DataArchiver Outlook Add-In

Recovery Destinations

• In-Place Recovery
• Out-of-Place Recovery
• Cross-Application Recoveries

Restore to Network Drive/NFS-Mounted File System

Recovery Considerations for these Agents

Overview

The Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent supports the following types of recoveries:

• Browse and Recovery of archived mail messages, including messages within archived PST files, using the CommCell Console and Outlook Add-In.
• Non-Browse Recovery of archived mail messages from stubs, using Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA). Outlook also supports the recovery of messages within archived PST files.

The Exchange Public Folder Archiver Agent supports the following types of recoveries:

• Browse and Recovery of archived public folder items using the CommCell Console.
• Non-Browse Recovery of archived public folder items from stubs, using Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA).

Recoveries can be performed in-place or out-of-place, and in certain scenarios cross-application and cross-platform recoveries are also supported. (See Recovery Destinations below for comprehensive information.)

Browse and recovery operations for Exchange Migration Archiver Agents can be performed from the client, agent, and archive set levels in the CommCell Browser.

When there is a problem with the Exchange Server or the operating system of the client computer full system restores may be required. The Exchange Migration Archiver Agents rely upon the corresponding Exchange Database iDataAgent to perform a full system restore of Exchange data. See Recover Data - Exchange Server - Full System Restore for more information.

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Message-Level Recovery Options

The Exchange Migration Archiver Agents offer a variety of options for recovering selected messages and items, which are available in the Exchange Migration Archiver Agent’s Recovery Options dialog box in the CommCell Console. These options and their descriptions are as follows:

• Append - All data objects selected for recovery will be added to the folder regardless of whether they currently exist or not. The Append option is selected by default.
• Unconditional Overwrite - If a data object that is selected for recovery already exists, that object will be overwritten by the recovered object.
• Unconditionally Overwrite only if target is a DataArchiver stub - Specifies whether a DataArchiver stub will be unconditionally overwritten during recovery. This option is useful for avoiding the overwriting of an object with the same name that was previously recalled or which may be a more recent version than the one being recovered.
• Skip - If an object is selected for recovery and that object already exists, it will not be recovered.

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Recovering All Protected Mail

The Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent and the Exchange Mailbox iDataAgent provide an option to recover all archived or backed up e-mail messages for specified mailboxes or folders on active indexes (i.e., data that has not been aged). This feature is useful for recovering all protected data from deleted mailboxes or folders in a single recovery operation, without having to perform a separate recovery operation for each index cycle. Data can be recovered from the latest index, or a point-in-time, all the way back to the least recent index that has not been aged.

For step-by-step instructions, see Recover All Protected Mail.

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Recover a Message from Outlook or OWA

In addition to browsing and recovering messages from the CommCell Console, the Exchange Migration Archiver Agents provide a method to allow end-users to selectively recover mail messages and public folder items from their Outlook clients or Outlook Web Access (OWA). If the subclient was configured to create stubs during migration archiving operations, users can click on a message/item stub to initiate a recovery of a previously archived message/item. Refer to the online help for the steps involved in performing these type of recoveries.

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Find and Recover Messages in Outlook

The Outlook Add-In, when used in conjunction with the Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent, provides a search capability allowing you to find archived messages based on name patterns in the Subject, From and/or To fields. Additionally, if your site is configured for Content Indexing you can take advantage of advanced search capabilities such as finding a string in the content of messages, as well as searching keywords or exact phrases in the Cc, Bcc fields or in the attachment name. See Content Indexing for more information on these advanced search capabilities.

NOTES

• For Exchange Mailbox-based agents, when performing searches on TO or FROM fields, alias name changes are not taken into account regardless of where the search is being conducted from. Therefore, it is recommended that you take alias names into consideration when searching at the mailbox level and narrow the search only by SUBJECT, if necessary, leaving the TO and FROM fields empty.

Configuring Single Sign-On (SSO) for DataArchiver Outlook Add-In

1. Add a New Domain Controller.
2. Add a New External User Group. Note that the CommServe user group must have End-User Search capabilities in order for the Single Sign On feature to work properly.

Once Single Sign-On has been configured, then Outlook users may perform find and browse recoveries of archived messages without the need to enter CommCell authentication credentials. When users select the Outlook Add-In option to Find and Recover Messages, their Windows user accounts are automatically granted rights to access the CommServe to perform this function as part of a CommCell User Group. For more information, see Single Sign On.

Exchange Migration Archiver — Archive Candidate and Message Stub Icons

When a message or item is added to the Archive List in Outlook, it is considered an archive candidate. The icon for the archive candidate will appear as the following symbol in Outlook:

After a message or item has been archived, it is considered a message/item stub. The icon for the message/item stub will appear as the following symbol in Outlook and OWA:

The following icon designates "selected for offline archive:"

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Recovery Destinations

By default, the Exchange Migration Archiver Agents recover data to the client computer from which it originated; this is referred to as an in-place recovery. You can also recover the data to another Client computer in the CommCell. Keep in mind the following considerations when performing such recoveries:

• The destination client must reside in the same CommCell as the client whose data was archived.
• Note that when you perform recoveries other than in-place recoveries, the recovered data assumes the rights (i.e., permissions) of the parent directory.

The following section enumerates the types of recovery destinations that are supported by the Exchange Migration Archiver Agents. See Recover Options - Recover Destinations - Support for a list of Agents supporting each restore/recovery destination type.

In-Place Recovery

• Same path/destination

When performing a non-browse recovery of archived data from a stub, keep in mind that the data can only be recovered in-place to the same path/destination on the same client from which the data was archived.

Out-of-Place Recovery

• Same path/destination
• Different path/destination  (Exchange Mailbox Archiver)

Keep in mind that out-of-place recoveries can only be accomplished via a Browse and Recovery operation from the CommCell Console.

Cross-Application Recoveries

Recovering archived data associated with different versions of the Exchange Server software is supported in the following scenarios:

• Support for restoring/recovering/retrieving data from one application version to another generally follows the same compatibility support provided by the associated third-party application vendor, unless otherwise noted.

• For the Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent, the restore destination can be the same mailbox, a different mailbox, or a PST file on another Exchange Server within the same organization and site with a compatible Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent installed and operational.
• For the Exchange Public Folder Archiver Agent, the restore destination can be the same path on another Exchange Server within the same organization and site with a compatible Exchange Public Folder Archiver Agent installed and operational.

Restore to Network Drive/NFS-Mounted File System

Data secured by the Exchange Migration Archiver Agents can be restored to a UNC path (Windows) or an NFS-Mounted File System (Unix). (See Restore to Network Drive/NFS-Mounted File System for comprehensive information.)

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Recovery Considerations for these Agents

Before performing any recovery procedures for these agents, review the following information.

• Prior to recovering a message or item from a deleted or disabled Exchange Mailbox, it is recommended that you first re-create or enable the deleted or disabled mailbox, then login to the Outlook client mailbox at least once for the system to recognize it as a valid or existing mailbox to which the message or item can be recovered.
• In order to recover the contents of a deleted mailbox, it is recommended if possible, that the mailbox be reconnected with the associated user. If the mailbox was purged, you must manually recreate it before running the recovery operation.
• Various user interface options are available for the DataArchiver Outlook Add-In, such as displaying a prompt before message recovery, and (if applicable) displaying menu items/buttons and allowing users to browse/search/erase archived data as well as enable Offline Archive options and the Search Console toolbar button. These settings are initially established during installation of the DataArchiver Outlook Add-In, and can be changed at any time to suit your needs by entering the desired value in the Galaxy.Ex2KMBDM.CVEAAddin (UIOptions) registry key.
• If you would like to change the default recovery mode (Overwrite, Append, or recall to Recovered Items folder) for the DataArchiver Outlook Add-In to be different than what was selected during installation, this can be done through the Galaxy.Ex2KMBDM.CVEAAddin (RecoveryOptions) registry key. See also, Configuring the Destination for Stub Recalls for Exchange Mailbox Archiver.
• If you perform a Find and Recover operation from Outlook Add-In, messages will always be appended to the destination path \recovered items.
• The Recovered Items folder can be cleaned up by using nRecoveredItemsDelAge registry key.

• If you perform a restore/recovery/retrieve operation using the CommCell Console and the restore/recovery/retrieve destination path is \recovered items, then the Overwrite and Skip restore options will be ignored. Instead, the messages will be appended.

• If you would like to change the default timeout value of 1800 seconds (i.e., 30 minutes) for disconnecting an idle DataArchiver Outlook Add-In Browse or content search session from the CommServe, this can be accomplished by creating the nOAINACTIVITYTIMEOUT registry key and specifying the desired number of seconds.

• To avoid possible intermittent message recall failures when using the DataArchiver Outlook Add-In in RPC over HTTP mode, worker process recycling and Web Garden options under IIS 6.0 should be disabled for the DMProxy Service. The installation or upgrade process will do this for you automatically. However, in the event that you need to perform this task manually, see Configure an Application Pool for the DataArchiver WebProxy Agent for Exchange for step-by-step instructions.

• Before performing a recovery of a message or item, ensure that the storage limits are disabled. Otherwise the storage limit may prevent the entire list of items from being recovered, even though the recovery job may report success. Once you have Disabled Storage Limits, you can perform the recovery operation.
• If the message or item you want to recover was archived using the Do not create stub option or the stub was manually deleted after archiving, then use the procedure to Recover a Message from the CommCell Console to perform the recovery.
• If a recovery job fails in progress and there are entries in the recovery list, there may be leftover items in the DataArchiverAdmin mailbox (which is associated with the DataArchiverAdmin profile that is required on the Exchange Server for this product).  If so, open the DataArchiverAdmin mailbox and remove any messages or items left over.  Be sure that there are no recovery jobs are in progress or scheduled during this procedure.
• If you would like to configure the Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent to spawn multiple persistent pipelines when stub recall requests are from different archive file IDs, the nDMRMaxRestoreThreads registry key can be used to accomplish this task.

• To change the default value of how long the persistent pipeline of this Archiver Agent will stay open during idle periods of a recovery operation, you can use the nDMRSIDLETIMEOUT registry key to accomplish this task. The pipeline stays persistent for 1200 seconds (20 minutes) by default.

• Exchange data that has been archived with pass-phrase encryption cannot be recovered from Outlook or OWA, but can be recovered by performing a Browse and Recovery operation from the CommCell Console.
• If you would like to customize the network port number used by the Client Event Manager Services on the Outlook Add-In client to communicate with the Exchange Server for conducting data recovery operations, you can enter a new port number in the nEvMgrCPortNumber registry key. Keep in mind that the port number specified in this registry key on the Outlook Add-In client must match the port number specified in the nEVMGRCPORT registry key on the Exchange Server. For general information on port number requirements, see Network TCP Port Requirements.
• The RecoveredItemsFolderName registry key allows you to customize the Recovered Items folder.  This key needs to be saved on both the Outlook Add-In client and Exchange client. In order to be able to customize the folder, the key must be identical on both clients. Therefore, any operation that makes use of the Recovered Items folder will be directed to the folder name specified in this key.
• Recalls of archived messages through OWA may fail with an error in situations where the archiver account exists in an Active Directory environment containing multiple sites. Such errors may resemble the following:

  GetItem failed, Length: 1Response Class: Error.Exception thrown in ExtractStubInfo, _esb.GetItem: Access is denied.

  This scenario can be resolved by performing the following steps:

  1. Add the following entry in the <appsettings> section of the web.config file, which is located in the <Exchange_Install_Path>\ClientAccess\OWA path:

     <add key="CVOWA:UseArchiverAccount" value="true" />

  2. Next, execute the following Exchange Management Shell commands. The ArchiveUser entry will generally be the same account configured for archiving operations:

     Get-ExchangeServer | where {$_.IsClientAccessServer -eq $TRUE} | ForEach-Object {Add-ADPermission -Identity $_.distinguishedname -User (Get-User -Identity ArchiverUser | select-object).identity -extendedRight ms-Exch-EPI-Impersonation}

     Get-MailboxDatabase | ForEach-Object {Add-ADPermission -Identity $_.DistinguishedName -User ArchiverUser -ExtendedRights ms-Exch-EPI-May-Impersonate}

  Once the above steps are complete, recalls of archived messages should complete successfully through OWA.

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