Restoring Databases to a Recovery Storage Group in Exchange Server 2003

You can restore databases to a recovery storage group from online backup sets that were taken using the ESE streaming backup APIs or by manually copying database files into the appropriate file paths. Recovery storage groups cannot be used to restore databases that were backed up using the Volume Shadow copy APIs. Exchange data that is backed up using the Volume Shadow copy APIs must be restored using the Volume Shadow copy APIs.

Restoring Databases from Online Backup Sets

Before you begin restoring data, make sure that you configure your system appropriately, as described in Setting Up a Recovery Storage Group. To review:

• A recovery storage group exists. If the server does not contain a storage group with the same name as the original storage group (for example, if you are restoring the database to a server on which it did not previously exist), the recovery storage group must have the same name as the original storage group.

• The database that you want to restore has been added to the recovery storage group. By default, these databases are not mounted. Leave them in this state.

  Note

  After changing permissions, adding or deleting recovery storage group databases, or changing recovery storage group attributes, it may take up to 15 minutes for previously cached values to be refreshed. Until the cache has been refreshed, restoring to or extracting data from the recovery storage group, or extracting data from it may fail.

The following figure provides a diagram of the restore process. For detailed instructions about how to restore databases from online backup sets, see How to Restore Databases from Online Backup Sets.

Overview of how to restore data from an online backup set to a recovery storage group

Restoring Databases from Offline or File Copy Backups

Before you begin restoring data, make sure that your system is configured appropriately, as described in Setting Up a Recovery Storage Group. To review, make sure that:

• A recovery storage group exists. Because you are not using an online backup, the name of the recovery storage group does not matter.

• The database that you want to restore has been added to the recovery storage group. The file names of the recovery storage group database match the file names of the original database. By default, the recovery storage group database is not mounted. Leave it in this state.

  Note

  After changing permissions, adding or deleting recovery storage group databases, or changing recovery storage group attributes, it may take up to 15 minutes for previously cached values to be refreshed. Until the cache has been refreshed, restoring to or extracting data from the recovery storage group may fail.

The following figure provides a diagram of the restore process. For detailed instructions about how to restore databases from offline or file copy backups, see How to Restore Databases from Offline or File Copy Backups.

Overview of how to restore data from an offline or file copy backup to a recovery storage group