Tag Archives: Lepide

RecoveryFix for Exchange Server Recovery

Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013Leave a comment

One of the most important component of the Exchange server is the database and it stores the user’s mailbox with emails, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes etc.

MS Exchange is considered as mission critical application as most of the business transaction happens over email. Hence, it is very important that the database are protected. Exchange server provides multiple native option to protect the database. Exchange backups, multiple database copy, LAG database copy are the common ways to protect database with minimum or no data loss.

In spite of multiple options and complex configuration, there is always a possibility of exchange database getting corrupt and cause a major downtime for the users with data loss. Exchange native tool ‘ESEUTIL’ could be used to fix the database corruption, but in most of the occasions, it take enormous amount of time to fix the corruption. Alternatively, you could restore data from the backups but it is subjected to data loss between the backup time and the restore time.

Lepide software Pvt. Ltd. offers RecoveryFix for Exchange Server Recovery tool, it helps to recover Exchange database from corruption. It works on all version of Exchange database file starting from Exchange 5.5 to latest version of Exchange. It is a very simple, easy and efficient tool.

RecoveryFix for Exchange Server Recovery tool accepts the database file .edb and .stm (for legacy database only) as source files.

 

Image: Selecting Corrupted database to recover

 

Operating the software, once the source database file is selected then it provides three different recovery mode options:

1. Automatic Analyze and recover: It is the recommended and fastest mode to restore the corrupted database. It scans through the database, fixes the corruption and lists all the recovered mailboxes in the database. Recovered mailboxes from the database can be exported to the .pst files.

2. Advance Scan: It is selected when database is severely corrupted and ‘Automatic Analyze and Recover’ option fails. This mode performs deep scanning of the database and it takes some time to recover the database. Once the database is fixed, it lists all the recovered mailboxes in the database. Recovered mailboxes from the database can be exported to the .pst files.

3. Rebuild corrupted database: This option reduces unnecessary efforts of exporting the user’s mailbox to .pst file and sharing with the users. It creates/rebuilds a new clean database by fixing the corruption in the database. The new recovered database is ready to mount on the Exchange servers.

 

Image: Recovery Modes to Recover Corrupted Database

 

Automatic analyze and recover and Advanced scan are the most common options, when you have bigger database and large number of mailboxes to recover. Once scanning process is done, it proves effective in fixing all the corruption and allows administrator to view/validate the mailboxes and its content.

Image: RecoveryFix for Exchange Server Console

Administrator can save all the recovered mailboxes into .pst file format. These .pst files can be imported into the target user’s mailbox or any other temp mailbox. Administrators can also share the .pst with users and can be accessed through their MS Outlook.

Saving the recovered mailboxes can be done easily by selecting ‘Save’ button from the top ribbon bar. Saving option provides some great flexibility to filter only the necessary emails based on date.

Administrator can easily filter emails based on predefined date or custom date. Finally at the end, one just got to define the path of the destination folder to save the recovered .pst files.

 

Image: Saving Option to export the .pst

 

Conclusions:

I think it’s a great tool to fix the corrupted Exchange database and at the same time can save your efforts and time. I recommend this tool for all the Exchange Server administrators. You can download the copy of the software from the Recoveryfix Website – http://www.recoveryfix.com/exchange-server-recovery.html

LepideMigrator for Exchange (LME)

Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Exchange 20131 Comment

Exchange migration involves a lot of effort and time; it is one of the most complex migrations to perform. After doing tons of exchange migration, I realized that not every environment is the same and not every migration is the same. During an exchange migration, everyone’s mailbox will be moved from one version of Exchange to the latest version or to the other organization. With the upgrade of Exchange servers, it is important that client outlook version is also upgraded to the latest level or to the level of Exchange servers. Thus, in a way everyone has to undergo some kind of changes with learning, while adopting a new Exchange environment into the organization.

LepideMigrator for Exchange (LME) is the new latest Exchange migration tool from Lepide which helps in performing a migration from one Exchange Environment to another which is either located locally or another network or even in the Office 365 or Exchange hosted solution in the cloud environment. It supports different migration scenarios, like

· Exchange 2003 / 2007 and Exchange 2010

· Exchange 2003 / 2007 and Exchange 2013

· Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013

· Migration from any Exchange Server to Office 365

· Public Folder Migration

· Intra-forest Exchange Migration

· Cross-forest Exchange Migration

Given below are a few interesting features of the products.

1. Innovative technique to migrate the large number of mailboxes from source Exchange server to the target which enhances the performance. It can be installed on multiple computers and increase migration volume depending on the requirement. We can also schedule the mailbox move by creating schedule jobs. It provides rich filtering options to filter unwanted email and migrate only necessary email to the target and can also provide the option to undo or rollback the mailbox migration, if necessary.

2. Exchange migration is a time-consuming process which needs a lot of effort and time. To reduce the migration efforts, we can sync the complete source mailbox to the target much ahead of time and just do an incremental sync only before the final cutover. This helps in avoiding any kind of data loss and outage to the users.

3. Report is very important for the migration and helps in tracking migration history and plan for the future migration. Notification helps administrator to notify the status of the migration status with email alerts for the job status, job completion, or job cancelation.

Migrations of the mailbox using LepideMigrator for Exchange is a very easy process and let’s understand on how easy it is to configure and to migrate a mailbox from one forest to another.

Given below is the Setup of my lab

1. Source forest Green.com

2. Target Forest blue.com

3. Creating DNS forwarding and trust between green.com and blue.com

Given below is a step-by-step instruction to perform cross forest migration.

1. Install LepideMigrator for Exchange at the source or target forest. In this scenario, the tool is installed on the source forest green.com. It is installed on the Windows 7 machine with outlook client installed

2. To perform the configuration, start the LepideMigrator for Exchange, Right click on All projects -> click on ‘Add Project’ -> provide the name to the Mailbox migration project

3. Then, create the new Job for the mailbox migration and provide the name for the same and click on ‘Next’

4. Connect to the source forest domain control by providing the IP address and administrator credentials. Then click on ‘Next’

5. Select all the necessary required users to migrate into the target domain and click on ‘Next’

6. Input the target domain controller IP address and the admin credentials. Make sure to specify ‘Different Domain’ for cross forest migration scenario and then click ‘Next’. You can also pull down ‘Migrate To’ to select the different options like same domain or office 365.

7. It also provides the filters to include or exclude the message based on date and folder. Click on ‘Next’ to continue

8. Here, we need to map the source mailbox with the target forest mailbox. It provides the option to map the source mailbox to target pre-created mailbox automatically. If not, we could provide the CSV file specifying the source and target mailbox mapping.

9. Another option could also be to create the target mailbox using the tool itself. Select all the source mailbox and click on message icon, then click on ‘Start’.

10. Once the target mailbox is created, then you could see the mapping done automatically for each of the source mailbox with the target. Click on ‘Next’ to continue.

11. Specify option to Skip the Bad item count or if you just want to do only the mailbox content synchronization, and then click on ‘Next’.

12. Specify the email address to receive various notifications for Job start, Job stop, Job completion, mailbox migration start / finish etc.

13. Notification configuration needs the SMTP address and other necessary configurations. Please provide the same and continue with the ‘Next’.

14. Specify the time duration to deny or permit the migration for the specific time period. It is important to make sure that migration is not done at the production hours, which could have the user performance impact. Click on ‘Next’ to continue.

15. Then schedule the migration depending on the requirement and click on ‘Next.

16. Finally, verify the summary details and click on ‘Finish’ to complete the Job creation.

17. It’s now the time to generate the license file and upload it to http://www.lepide.com/lepide-migration-for-exchange. It generates the generate activation file, download the import it to activate the same.

18. Once the license is activated, we are ready to start the mailbox migration by right clicking on the Job and select the option ‘Start Job’.

Report Console

1. Report console helps to generate the migration statistics report. It helps to analyze the migration details and also to track the status. This report has the complete statistics of the migration performed using the server. It has details of number of jobs, with the domain details and the Exchange version specifications.

To start the report console

2. Start the LepideMigrator for Exchange

3. Click on tool -> click on Report Console

4. Login with the account and password as ‘lepadmin’

5. To understand the details of each of the migration job, click on the Job name. It gets the detailed information with number of mailboxes, total folders, migrated messages and status. Below is the reference screen shot.

6. You could also generate some quick reports in html or pdf file using the options available in the bottom left corner of the LepideMigrator for Exchange tool.

Conclusion:

This migration could take some time depending upon factors like the size of the source mailbox, bandwidth, source and target server performance, etc. Migration using a ‘LepideMigrator for Exchange’ is much simpler to configure and manage than a native migration tool. It provides option to migrate the account with SID History and also copy the password from the source to target account, which is very important for the cross forest migration scenario. It also provides option to migrate public folders and also apply the settings like mailbox rights, send as permission, public folder administration rights send on behalf, message delivery restriction, and public folder client permission.

I believe, LepideMigrator for Exchange is a compressive tool to perform migration under various scenario. This tool has all the features to perform end to end migration.

You can find the detailed information about the tool at http://www.lepide.com/exchangemigrator/ and  also download the trial version from http://www.lepide.com/exchangemigrator/download.html

Kernel for Exchange Server Recovery

Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Exchange 20132 Comments

Exchange Server is one of the most business critical applications in an organization; accessed by everyone in the organization, everyday and round the clock. It can be from their outlook client, tabs, mobile devices etc. Exchange Server emails are also considered to be legal and many organizations retain the user’s mailbox data for compliance and regulatory requirement with legal hold option in Exchange Servers. This adds a lot of pressure on the IT Department to make sure that emails servers are protected from various unforeseen situations like DB failure, Server failure and AD site failure. The latest version of Exchange Server offers some high availability and site resiliency with DAG. These options can only protect the database from different physical failures or physical corruption, but they cannot protect it from logical corruption. Logical corruption could be due to physical hard drive errors, file size errors, JET errors, human errors, virus attacks, hardware problems, etc. During the logical corruption we may have to rely on the backups to restore the database and this is subject to data loss for the users.

Kernel Exchange Server Recovery and EDB Repair Tool can easily perform database recovery without any data loss from the corrupted database. It can not only connect to the corrupted database repairs corrupt, damages but also allow exporting of the user mailbox data into the PST. Again, it can even copy the content to the user’s mailbox in the live exchange servers.

It is an easy to use to tool with simple GUI which can connect to any database file from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2013.

It provides the option to perform a standard or advanced scan. Generally, scan is used but advance scan mode is used only when a DB is severely corrupted and unable to recover it using the standard scan.

Once it is connected, it scans through the entire EDB file, fixes the corruption and displays the entire mailbox in the EDB file. Right click on the EDB file and save the contents of all the mailbox into individual users .PST or it can even connected to the live exchange server mailbox. If required, you can also export the content of the individual mailbox only to the .PST or to the live exchange server, depending on the requirement.

 

It also provides the option to perform advance search for the individual mailbox and export the contents.

It is a great life-saving tool for Exchange administrators who can even recover the items which are permanently deleted from the deleted items folder. It also support public folder and provides the option to export the public folder content into PST. It provides options to export the individual emails to MSG, EML, RTF, HTML, TEXT and PST files. It can even export the mailbox bigger than 2 GB and in case there is no 2GB mailbox size limitation, it can split the mailbox, which is more than 2 GB into multiple PST files.

I think this is a great and handy tool for all Exchange administrators and would recommend this tool for the all Exchange administrators to explore this product and when there is a critical server’s database corruption. Also, the free trail can saves/export 25 items per folder. Please check download page for more information.

http://www.nucleustechnologies.com/Exchange-Server-Data-Recovery.html

http://www.nucleustechnologies.com/download-exchange-server-recovery.php

Product Review – Lepide Exchange Reporter Tool

Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Exchange 20131 Comment

Lepide Exchange Reporter Tool is the proactive tool for the Exchange administrator. It provides some good reports to monitor the exchange environment and proactively helps administrators to keep the environment healthy and secure. Let’s delve deep into understanding some of the greatest features it offers.

The trial version of Lepide Exchange Reporter tool can be downloaded from the Lepide Website, which supports all legacy versions right from Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010 and to the latest version of Exchange 2013. It is a simple installable tool which can be installed on any server or client OS with the mandatory requirements demanded of outlook and SQL server. The requirement of the Outlook and SQL server versions needed to suit Exchange environment can be found at the download link given above.

The Lepide Exchange Reporter Tool generates various reports and has been divided as follows:

· Dash View

· Report View

· Mailbox Folder

Let’s get into each of these reports in detail to understand what it is able to provide its Exchange Administrators.

DASH VIEW

The Dash View provides some quick summary view for the administrator to get the following information:

1. Top 5 senders by number of the messages.

2. Top 5 receivers by number of messages.

3. Information Store by EDB and STM Size.

4. Information Store by Mailbox store and Public folder size.

5. Top 5 mailboxes by size.

6. Top 5 OWA users by usage count.

Figure 1. Dash View

REPORT VIEW

The Report View provides detailed information about the exchange environments, which we may need to focus more here. This report view is further divided into three parts: Email flow, OWA Report and General Report.

Email Flow

The Email Flow report is generated from the message-tracking logs and archives all the history log information into the SQL database. The email flow information queries can be filtered on the basis of the required time stamp.

It has mail flow information based on the user, subject, receivers’ and senders’ messages from within and outside an organization. This information can be sorted based on their date and size. Shown below is a reference snap shot.

OWA Report

The OWA Report is one of the important components of Exchange since many of the remote clients can connect OWA through Web browser in order to access their emails. Since these OWA connections majorly come from the internet, it is important to closely monitor them. For instance, sometimes, cyber attaches can happen over OWA, which in turn can adversely affect a user’s access.

The OWA Reports includes information of heavy OWA users, clients and server computers sending high OWA request and download the maximum data.

General Report

The General Report has a lot of information, which is necessary for day-to-day activities and can also be used for upgrades or transitions. It generates many reports, such as:

Directory Reports

It has detailed information of every user’s mailbox, distribution group and other directory objects in the organization.

Message Delivery Reports

It has detail information on every message sent/received in an organization. It also keeps track on the time taken for the message delivered to the target recipient.

Mailbox Information Reports

It provides detail information about every mailbox in an organization. It has information on each and every mailbox’s permission, rules, folder size, item age graph, item size graph, attachment per mailbox, etc.

I found this part to be informative, and hence it is imperative for users to take note on this. Shown below is the reference snapshot.

Mailbox Traffic Reports

It has detailed information on the daily traffic, mailbox-traffic growth, traffic between users and other such useful data.

Shown below is a reference snapshot.

Outlook Web Access

Outlook Web Access has important information to perform the strategic decision on the usage. It has information on the hourly and daily usage and also has information based on every OWA user.

Public Folder Reports

Monitoring public folders is very important to keep them in control. Many organizations do not monitor public folders and these folders grow enormously over a period of time. Public folder reports provide vital information like growth graph, along with the size, content, permission and restriction of the public folder.

Server Traffic Reports

Server Traffic Reports help to understand an email sent from and received of every domain based on the count and also has the traffic comparison graph between the domains.

Given below is the reference screen shot.

Storage Reports

Storage Reports have the most important report to keep the storage growth under control. Generally after the initial build of an Exchange server, expansion of storage is not easy. Sometimes there can be limitation of expansion slots or companies may not have the budget for expansion. Sometimes database grow enormously over a period of time for various reasons. Storage reports helps to provide information on Mailbox size growth graph and Information store size growth graph. Monitoring these reports will help to predict the data growth to plan for the expansion. They also help in identifying abnormal mailbox growth.

Mailbox Folders

Mailbox folders are the last report on Lepide Exchange Reporter tool which help administrators to access public folders and content of various mailboxes. It allow administrators to review the details of every mailbox folder and generate a report in the easy understandable format. For instance, report can be filtered on the basis of its date; and exported in various standard formats like CSV, PDF, and DOC etc. These reports are great helpful when huge amount of data needs to be tracked and it’s generate the report with all the minute change in the exchange mailboxes. For example sometimes we may wanted to get the report of mailbox size and its growth or unused mailboxes.

Majority of the reports from this tool are generated from the SQL Server, which is installed along with this tool. This help to generate various history report, where logs are no longer available on the Exchange servers. It scans all the necessary logs from the Exchange servers on the regular basics or based on the schedule time and updates into the SQL servers. Logs Scan schedule can be configure to run “Full Scan” once and incremental scan for the next consecutive runs.

Various logs it scans from the Exchange servers are:

· Messaging Tracking logs

· IIS Logs

· Information Store

· Mailbox Information

In my opinion, Lepide Exchange Reporting tool (http://www.lepide.com/exchange-reporter/) is an excellent tool which can help administrators to keep the environment under control and help in generating various reports for the management, as and when required, without writing any complex scripts. This is a tool that needs to be configured once and schedule it to collect reports on a day-to-day basis in order to generate a customized report, whenever needed. The reports, thus generated, can also be used for sizing, when you are upgrading your Exchange environment to a higher or to the latest versions of Exchange.