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How do I use EXMERGE to make
Brick-Level backups of Exchange 2000/2003 mailboxes?
High Availability and Storage in Exchange Server
2010
This video tutorial explains how
mailbox availability is achieved in Exchange server 2010 and how the new
and improved database recovery and storage features help organizations
manage their Exchange environment better.
Watch and learn by starting this
video here!
One of the most important tasks for an Exchange administrator is the
regular, day-by-day, backing up of all the Exchange databases. This can
be easily accomplished by use of the built-in NTBACKUP.EXE software
found on your Exchange 2000/2003 server.
Note: You can also
Backup Exchange 2000/2003 from a Non-Exchange Server.
Some administrators might choose to your 3rd-Party backup tools, such
as:
However, as stated above (and in the Backing
up Exchange 2000/2003 with NTBACKUP article), you do NOT need to
buy expensive 3rd-Party tools just to backup your Exchange server.
Then why bother with expensive 3rd-Party backup tools? The main
reasons behind the usage of such tools are their advanced scheduling
capabilities, advanced tape drive management, and in some cases - the
ability to perform Brick-Level backups of your Exchange mailboxes.
What is Brick-Level Mailbox backup?
Brick-Level mailbox backup is a method in which the backup program
logs on into each mailbox on the store (by using MAPI, just like Outlook
does) and then backs-up the contents of the mailboxes to the tape
device. Each mailbox is backed up individually, and thus restoring a
specific mailbox in case it has been deleted and purged from the
database is easier than before.
Note: Read Recover a
Deleted Mailbox for more info on how to restore a mailbox that has
not been purged from the database.
Not every 3rd-Party backup software does Brick-Level backups, as
stated in one
of the vendor's website: The main reasons for the lack of
Brick-Level support are that a Brick-Level backup is not designed to
fully protect an Exchange server, just one mailbox at a time. It is not
an alternative to a monolithic (full) backup/restore. A Brick-Level
restore cannot be used to recover the Information Store after a
disaster. If used, a Brick-Level backup must be utilized in conjunction
with a monolithic backup in order to fully protect the server.
In order for any 3rd-party backup software to be able to do
Brick-Level backups, the product would have to backup multiple copies of
the same message. In other words, it would have to change the Exchange
Single Instance architecture database. Removing the Single Instance
architecture is possible but it would mean longer backup time and
greater tape usage.
Single Instance architecture is a method used by Exchange to reduce
the size of the database and also to minimize disk space fluctuation
when users read and delete their mail messages. A case in point is that
when a message is being sent to 100 users. If all 100 users were on the
same server, then Exchange would store only a single copy in the
database, but would create a pointer in each of the 100 mailboxes that
the message was being sent. When the user reads and deletes the mail
message, only the pointer is deleted. Without the Single Instance
architecture, 100 copies of the message would have to be created. More
importantly is that when the users read and delete the message, it
creates tremendous disk usage fluctuation.
The problem with Single Instance architecture is that when you
restore a user's mailbox, you are only restoring the pointer. Hence, you
need to restore the complete database so that mailbox pointer would
work. In order to restore a user mailbox, Exchange would have to restore
all messages found on each of the mailbox pointers. That is very
difficult using tape technology. To accomplish a complete mailbox
restore, the backup software would have to remove the Single Instance
architecture by replacing the pointer with the message. This requires
more time for the backup and also more tapes are used. Furthermore, by
replacing the Single Instance architecture, what happens if one needs to
restore the whole database? Will the Single Instance Architecture be
maintained?
As noted above, Brick-Level backup capabilities rely on MAPI to
access each mailbox to re-create all of the mailbox data in the message
store. Performance can be as slow as 8MB/min. If studies are to be
believed, each message is sent to an average of 4 users. Therefore, the
size of the resulting data-file (it's not an information store) would
increase dramatically because the notion of a single-instance does not
apply. For example, using the 4:1 ratio, a 30GB Information Store could
end up occupying 120GB on 3-4 tapes (assuming 40GB tapes). And that is
in addition to the monolithic backups done for disaster recovery!
As you might guess, Brick-Level backups and restores can easily get
out of proportion, both in time for the backups to take place, and in
space once the database is restored. (An Exchange database that was
backed up Brick-Level, when restored, could be about 4 times larger than
it was originally!)
I still want to use Brick-Level backup. How do I do that?
Sometimes backing up one or 2 mailboxes via the Brick-Level backup
method is still a welcome option, especially in cases where these
mailboxes belong to users that have a tendency to mess things up, and
especially when they are your boss, and they do not know the meaning of
the word "NO!". :-)
You can still do Brick-Level backups of specific mailboxes by using a
tool called EXMERGE.
We can utilize the power of EXMERGE to backup any mailbox on any
server (you can also do it remotely) and you can easily schedule it to
run at a specific interval.
Perquisites
First, you need to obtain the correct version of EXMERGE for your
Exchange server. EXMERGE first shipped with the Exchange 5.5 Resource
Kit and the most recent version can be obtained from the latest Exchange
2000 Service Pack (SP3) and Exchange Server 2003 installation CD.
- Exchange
5.5 (v3.3.10) (1.4 mb)
- You need to extract and use the tool, don't
mind the rest of the stuff. - Exchange
2000 (v6.0.4400) ( 528 kb) - This is the older E2K Resource Kit version.
It's best that you obtain the version that came with Exchange 2000
Service Pack 3 (v6.0.6249 - Get it from HERE if you
must).
- Exchange
Server 2003 (v6.5.7082) (423 kb) - (You can also get it from HERE if you
must).
Note: To write this article I've used Exchange
Server 2003 and the latest version of EXMERGE, however the procedure is
quite the same with previous versions.
After downloading the correct version of EXMERGE, extract the files
found in it by using tools like WinZip or WinRAR. You will now need to
copy EXMERGE.EXE to the %Program Files%\Exchsrvr\bin folder of
your Exchange server.
Next, you need to configure your user account to have full mailbox
rights for the specific mailbox/mailboxes that you want to open. On
Exchange 2000/2003 the Exchange Full Administrator permissions does NOT,
by default, allow you to open any other user's mailbox.
The above screenshot is an example of EXMERGE failure due to poorly
configured permissions. Read
Grant Full Mailbox Rights to an Administrator on Exchange 2000/2003
for more info.
Configuring EXMERGE
To perform Brick-Level backups of one or more mailboxes found on one
Exchange server follow these steps:
- Navigate to the %Program Files%\Exchsrvr\bin folder of your Exchange
server and double-click EXMERGE.EXE.
- On the Welcome page click Next.
- On the “Procedure Selection” dialogue box, select “Export or Import
(Two Step Procedure)”.
- On the “Two Step Procedure” dialogue box, select “Step 1: Extract
data from and Exchange Server Mailbox”.
- In the “Source Server” dialogue box specify the name of your
Exchange server. If you have a multiple domain environment you'll need
to specify the name and LDAP port number of your Domain Controller.
Click Next.
- In the “Database Selection” dialogue box select the mailbox store
you want to perform the action upon.
Note: In a scenario where you only have one mailbox
store you will not be presented with this page.
![](�http://ad1.netshelter.net/ad/ns.petri/archive;ppos=BTF;kw=;tile=2;sz=300x250,336x280;ord=123456789??")
Click Next.
- In the “Mailbox Selection” dialogue box select individual mailboxes
or press the “Select All” button to select all mailboxes found in that
store. In this example I will only select one mailbox. Note that you can
also see the mailbox size next to the mailbox name.
Click Next.
- On the “Locale Selection” dialogue box select the Locale that you
would like to use to search the mailboxes.
Hebrew users note: To successfully utilize the power
of EXMERGE when using Hebrew enabled servers with Hebrew-titled items
and mailbox names you MUST follow the next tip: EXMERGE and
Hebrew Fonts. Failing to do so might cause great damage to your
exported mailboxes and to the names and titles of items within those
mailboxes. Failing to do so will not harm the items that are in the
original mailboxes, however items that were exported to the .PST files
might turn out to be illegible.
Click Next.
- Specify the path to the folder where you want to place the .PST
files. This folder should reside on a different HD that the one where
your mailbox stores are located, but this is only a recommendation for
performance benefits, not a must. Also, make sure you have enough free
space on that partition.
Click Next.
- On the “Save Settings” dialogue box you can now save the settings
you've configured so far, or you can just click Next. You can also
chance the name and location of the files used by EXMERGE by clicking on
the “File Names” button.
Note: Notice where you save these files. You can
later modify the settings of the EXMERGE operation by simply altering
some parts of these files.
For example, if you look at the contents of the MAILBOXES.TXT file,
you'll see that you can easily add or remove mailboxes by adding or
deleting rows in that file.
Take some time to explore these files, it's well worth spending a few
minutes on them.
- After pressing Next the process will begin. This could take a
considerable about of time depending on how many mailboxes you've
selected and the size of the mailboxes.
Notice an example of a successful process:
If you get a window that states that there were one or more failures,
such as this one:
then it's probably because of wrong permissions on the destination
mailboxes. Re-read
Grant Full Mailbox Rights to an Administrator on Exchange 2000/2003
and start from the beginning of the article.
Automating EXMERGE
You can easily automate the process of exporting the mailboxes to
.PST files by running EXMERGE from the command prompt or from a simple
batch file.
To perform automated Brick-Level backups of one or more mailboxes
found on one Exchange server follow these steps:
- Run the steps outlined in the "Configuring EXMERGE" section above -
up to step number 16. Do NOT press Next (i.e. do NOT perform step number
17).
- In step 16 make sure you save the EXMERGE configuration files in a
convenient path, i.e. c:\EXMERGE\ or similar.
- Quit EXMERGE (i.e. do NOT perform step number 17).
- Notice that the saved files location (i.e. c:\EXMERGE\)
holds a few files. At the minimum, it will hold the following files:
EXMERGE.INI MAILBOXES.TXT
- Open the MAILBOXES.TXT file (with Notepad or similar) and
notice how the mailboxes that are to be exported are listed (in the
format of a Distinguished Name - or DN). You can easily add or remove
mailboxes by editing the MAILBOXES.TXT file.
For instance, if you want to cause EXMERGE to work on the mailboxes
of a user called DANIEL and another user called DAVID, then open the
MAILBOXES.TXT file and add the following lines:
/O=FIRST ORGANIZATION/OU=FIRST ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=DANIEL
/O=FIRST ORGANIZATION/OU=FIRST ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=DAVID
Note that you do need to use the RIGHT syntax for YOUR scenario, this
is just an example.
- Open the EXMERGE.INI file (with Notepad or similar) and
notice how the EXMERGE settings are entered. In most cases you will not
need to manually edit these settings, however make sure you read the
following note:
Hebrew users note: To successfully utilize the power
of EXMERGE when using Hebrew enabled servers with Hebrew-titled items
and mailbox names you MUST follow the next tip: EXMERGE and
Hebrew Fonts. Failing to do so might cause great damage to your
exported mailboxes and to the names and titles of items within those
mailboxes. Failing to do so will not harm the items that are in the
original mailboxes, however items that were exported to the .PST files
might turn out to be illegible.
- After you're satisfied with the changes you've made to the files (if
any changes were made in the first place) you can now run the EXMERGE
operation via the command line or through a simple batch file (which can
also be scheduled by using the AT command):
EXMERGE -F C:\EXMERGE\EXMERGE.INI -B
(use your own path to the EXMERGE.INI file)
- Note how the .PST file(s) will be added to the folder which was
specified as the file location. Note that this process might take a
considerable amount of time, all depending on the number and size of the
mailboxes being exported. You ill not get a visual confirmation of the
operation, and you will not be notified when it has ended, however, if
you're in doubt, use Task Manager to see if the EXMERGE.EXE process is
still running.
If you want to get a visual GUI you can add -D to the command, thus
causing EXMERGE to display the GUI while running:
EXMERGE -F C:\EXMERGE\EXMERGE.INI -B -D
Done!
You must be aware of the following issues:
Security - EXMERGE does not password-protect the
.PST files it creates. For security reasons, you’ll want to create the
.PST files on a secure file system, such as NTFS.
Storage Space - You need to consider how much space
is required to store the .PST files and with what frequency you will
have to purge the archived .PST files. You might want to add some
archiving features to your script, such as zipping all the .PST files
after exporting them.
Overwriting .PST files - If there is no
corresponding .PST file for the mailbox in the export folder, EXMERGE
will create a new .PST file for the mailbox. The .PST file naming
convention is <alias>.PST. If a .PST file for the mailbox already
exists in the export folder, EXMERGE will export only new message data
from the mailbox to the .PST file. Therefore, you may want to purge the
.PST files or move them to another directory so that EXMERGE will create
new .PST files when it runs next time. Single Instance
Architecture - When EXMERGE exports mailbox data to a .PST
file, you lose the benefit of the Single-Instance message storage
capability, so don’t be surprised if a mailbox’s newly created .PST file
is 10 to 50 percent larger than the mailbox itself.
Restoring the mailboxes
You have several options when you need to restore mail from a
mailbox’s .PST file. You can run EXMERGE in normal mode and select the
.PST data by a range of dates or other criteria and restore them
directly to any production mailbox.
Or you can copy the .PST file to the user’s local disk or make it
available on a network share. Then, instruct the user to add Personal
Folders to their Outlook Profile and add the .PST file when they do so.
The user can then browse through the .PST file’s contents and retrieve
the messages they are looking for.
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