Hi all,
In response to a few questions we’ve had (and also due to the fact that people are having difficulty finding Microsoft’s documentation on the matter), we have released a brief document that describes how to restore Exchange Server 2007 from a Windows Server 2008 image backup (VHD backup made by Windows Server Backup or BackupAssist).
http://wbadmin.info/articles/howto-exchange-2007-restore.html
The article above describes how to restore using the Windows Server Backup restore UI.
It is also possible to do the restore by:
- Restoring the Exchange application to an alternative location, such as your desktop – which will restore just the files of the Exchange databases
- Dismounting the relevant Exchange stores / shutting down the Exchange services
- Copying over the mailbox directories from your newly restored location back to the original location
- Restarting the Exchange services / remounting the stores
Important disclaimer: We’re not sure if this method is documented or supported by Microsoft, but note that it is virtually idential to the “Forklift” procedure that was popular with Exchange 2000/2003, where it was possible to restore Exchange databases to new exchange servers using the same method.
We recommend using the Microsoft UI to do the restore where possible – that was the first method described in this blog post.
Hope that answers a few questions!
Linus
