Best of Questions and Answers from TechNet Webcast: Disaster Recovery in Exchange Server 2007

Hi all!

Below are the questions I pulled out of the Q&A log from the TechNet Webcast: “Disaster Recovery in Exchange Server 2007“, along with extended answers (especially to those I answered verbally).

Hope you find them useful!

Kevin

PS: Here is my resource page for this webcast.

 

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Questions and Answers:

“Will you cover Standby continuous replication (SCR)?”

First off – let me apologize for my webcast answer.  SCR is something I was not aware of yet, so I didn’t catch on to what you were talking about. 

Now.. after searching-it-out – I see that It’s a new technology that is a part of Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Exchange Server 2007.  It’s a wicked-cool extension of LCR and CCR-type log shipping; but much more.

Rather than restating the details on SCR here, you can get them all from the very folks that created it – The Exchange Team – on their blog, “You had me at EHLO”, at their post about it here:  http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/06/28/445538.aspx

 

“What is the best method of recovering a single email if the user deleted it from his mailbox?”

First, have them get it from Deleted Items. (grin)

If they’ve already cleared those, then they could still recover it if they are within the deleted item retention period

 

“Do you have to have to create a recovery storage group in order to restore exchange 2007?”

I didn’t want to say this during the Q&A session on the live webcast… but… Weren’t you paying attention?!

No.. you don’t.  As we talked about – you can restore storage groups to pretty much anywhere… as long as you’ve defined that mailbox database on a server, you can copy the files over or restore them there, and mount it.  Truly portable databases.

 

“Can all of the roles reside on a single server?”

All but the Edge and any clustered Mailbox servers. In a cluster, the Mailbox Role needs to be the only one.. and at the Edge, the Edge Transport Role has to be alone as well. But otherwise you could have Mailbox, Client Access, Hub Transport, and Unified Messaging Roles all on the same server if you choose. Or mix and match. 🙂

Here’s a good description of the Exchange Server 2007 Roles: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996031.aspx

 

“With 03 a workaround allowed the front end on the same server. Is there a similar workaround even if not supported? Is an Edge required?”

Edge isn’t strictly required, though the functionality is a “very good idea” to have. There is a script that will enable the anti-spam capabilities on a Hub Transport server to take that part over.. but I really recommend either having some screening outside your firewall on premise, or through a hosted service like the Exchange Hosted Services I talked about.