by
Shijaz Abdulla on 26.01.2009 at 09:24
January 26, 2009
On Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Troubleshooting Agent hangs/crashes after you mount the database in the recovery storage group and begin the actual ‘merge or copy mailbox’ process with the following (or similar) crash information:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: ExTRA.exe
Application Version: 8.1.240.3
Application Timestamp: 47342a91
Fault Module Name: migbase.dll
Fault Module Version: 8.1.240.5
Fault Module Timestamp: 47427ba1
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000000000006741e
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.274.10
Locale ID: 1033
Operating System: Windows 2008 Server
Time Zone: (GMT+04:00) Abu Dhabi, Muscat
Alternate Language: en-US
Support topic(s): Tools/ExTRA
The solution would be to install Rollup Update 5 on Exchange Server 2007 SP1.
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by
Shijaz Abdulla on 12.08.2008 at 07:38
If you need to optimally use your backup tapes by storing multiple backups on the same tape, you need to turn on the Media Co-location feature in Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007. By default, DPM 2007 uses a single tape for each backup operation and does not use that tape again till it is expired, marked as free or erased.
In order to enable Media Co-location, you need to install the DPM 2007 Feature pack and then issue the following command in the DPM Shell:
Set-DPMGlobalProperty -DpmServer <DPM Server Name> -OptimizeTapeUsage $true
Please note that this command will not work unless you have the DPM 2007 Feature Pack installed. To verify that co-location was indeed enabled, check the Management > Libraries tab.
An important point to note is that, even with co-location enabled, DPM will not store two different backups from the same protection group into a single tape. The co-location feature only allows co-locating data from multiple protection groups with the same retention ranges in a tape till it is full.
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by
Shijaz Abdulla on 07.05.2008 at 16:25
In this post, I explain how you can use System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (hereafter DPM) to recover a single Exchange Server 2007 mailbox to a Recovery Storage Group (hereafter RSG) and ‘merge’ the restore with the actual mailbox.
On our production environment, we have Exchange Server 2007 SP1 SCC running on a Windows Server 2008 failover cluster.
Before continuing, make sure you have created a Recovery Storage Group on your Exchange 2007 mailbox server for the mailbox database that you want to restore to. This can be done via GUI (Toolbox > Database Recovery Management) or via Powershell.
new-storagegroup -Server <Server_Name> -LogFolderPath path_to_Logfiles> -Name <RSG_Name> -SystemFolderPath <Database_Path> -Recovery
On the DPM server, click on the Recovery tab, and navigate through the hierarchy and locate the storage group that contains the mailbox that you want to recover. Double clicking on the mailbox database, shows a list of mailboxes. Right click on the mailbox you want to restore and click Recover. You can also select a date and time of the recovery point from which you would like to restore.
In the Recovery Wizard, review the recovery information click Next and select the recovery type. Click browse to select your mailbox server. You will have to manually type the Storage Group Name (specify your Recovery Storage Group name here) and your Database Name (the mailbox database name inside your RSG). 
Click Next, review the options and begin the restoration process.
Once the recovery process is complete, go back to the Exchange 2007 mailbox server. Open Exchange Management Console –> Toolbox –> Database Recovery Management.
Mount the Mailbox database that you just restored in the Recovery Storage Group. This shouldn’t require more explanation.
After mounting the database, come back to the above menu and select Merge or copy mailbox contents.
Select the mailbox database that contains the mailbox you want to recover and click Gather Merge information. On the next screen, review the merge options and click Perform pre-merge tasks.
Select your mailbox and click Perform Merge actions. Once the process completes, review the result.
The restored mailbox on the RSG database is now merged with the production database.
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by
Shijaz Abdulla on 07.05.2008 at 10:38
See also: Data Protection Manager 2007 with Exchange Server 2007 SP1 – Part 1
I’ve just managed to get Data Protection Manager 2007 to protect my production Exchange Server 2007 SP1 mailbox servers running in a Single Copy Cluster (SCC) configuration on Windows Server 2008.
The configuration process is fairly simple. Once I have installed the DPM agents on all cluster nodes, I created a protection group for my SCC cluster as follows:
Since I will not be using a tape drive, I just chose a short-term recovery goal to back up to a storage device. You can choose to have a synchronization done every 15 minutes so that you will be able to restore your database to the latest 15 minute recovery point and then automatically apply the any logs remaining on your production servers.
It’s also important to configure your Express Full backup at least once a day. This also takes care of truncating the committed transaction log files, which tend to grow over time and fill up disk space on your log drives.
See also: Recovering a single Exchange 2007 mailbox using DPM 2007
***Lighten your load. Store, Backup and Access Important Files Online using ElephantDrive – Free Trial.***
by
Shijaz Abdulla on 05.05.2008 at 17:11
I’ve managed to pull up a two node Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Single Copy Cluster (SCC) running on Windows Server 2008 failover cluster. Moved in a few mailboxes (mostly belonging to my colleagues, who have so graciously consented to being guinea pigs.. um err.. volunteers for this project). 
So far so good, there weren’t any major surprises.
Until when I started thinking about Backup.
Here’s the shocker for those of you who don’t know: Windows Server Backup (the all-new ‘NTBACKUP’ that ships with Windows Server 2008) does not support backing up Exchange Server 2007 mailbox stores!
Other major backup vendors like Veritas/Symantec Netbackup do not support Windows Server 2008 yet. Well, what can you do whilst you wait for the vendors to come up with Windows Server 2008 support?
You can use System Center Data Protection Manager 2007! I am currently evaluating this possibility, and will post my experiences on this blog.
***Lighten your load. Store, Backup and Access Important Files Online using ElephantDrive – Free Trial.***
by
Shijaz Abdulla on 08.04.2008 at 07:24
Your enterprise root CA is an important piece of your enterprise network. Especially if you issue a lot of certificates for a wide variety of purposes to your users.
A root CA also needs to be highly secured, both physically and over the network, because it contains the private key. A downtime on the root CA is seldom noticed because there is minimal need for using the server – except while issuing or renewing certificates. In fact, the Microsoft best practice is to power down your root CA when not in use.
Now, what to do if your enterprise root CA crashes? Information about the enterprise root CA is written on the Active directory, in the registry of the Windows Server hosting the CA, and most important of all, the private key is also stored on this machine.
Quite obviously, In the event of a total failure, a backup is required. Taking a backup of the root CA is often neglected. Believe me, it takes virtually no time to take a backup and it’s the only way to restore your CA with all private keys intact.
Microsoft KB Article 298138 explains how you can backup your CA and move it to separate hardware. The procedure is also applicable if the hardware running your root CA crashes totally and you want to set up the same CA on a new server hardware.
In this post, I will explain how you can automate a backup of the CA. Restoration can be done as per the article mentioned above. Write a script “backupCA.bat” with the following code:
certutil -backup D:\backup
certutil -backupkey D:\backup
certutil -backupdb D:\backup
reg export HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CertSvc\Configuration D:\backup\regbackup.reg
Make sure the D:\backup folder is picked up by your centralized tape backup solution. Be extra careful with the tape because this contains the private key of your CA. Your organization should have the handling of tapes included in the security policy.
