Mounting Exchange Server backups

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To see a copy of Exchange Server data from a specific point in time, mount a snapshot backup.

About this task

A copy of data from a specific time is also known as a point-in-time consistent copy or online snapshot.
Restriction: You cannot use Microsoft™ Management Console (MMC) to mount a backup to a different server. To mount a VSS snapshot to a remote server, enter the mount backup command at the command line, or use the Mount-DpExcBackup cmdlet.

When you submit a mount request, all of the volumes that are contained in the original snapshot set are imported. If the number of volumes that are imported exceed the maximum number of allowable mapped volumes for the environment, the mount operation can fail.

You can mount VSS snapshot backups either as read-only or read/write. When a snapshot backup is mounted as read/write, you can do individual mailbox or mail item restores without needing to copy the Exchange database file from the snapshot backup into the recovery database (RDB); which greatly reduces the restore time. There are two variations of the mount read/write option:
  • Mount read/write (modifies backup, applies to COPY backups only)

    For VSS providers that support transportable shadow copies, you can mount a COPY type backup as read/write. After mounting, your COPY backup is marked as modified and while you can mount it again in the future, this backup can no longer be used as a restore point in future full database restore operations. It can be used for mailbox restore operations only. All databases on the snapshot volume that are mounted as read/write are marked as modified.

  • Mount read/write (without modifying backup)

    This mount option is only available for SAN Volume Controller (SVC) devices and requires IBM® System Storage® Support for Microsoft Virtual Disk and Volume Shadow Copy Services version 4.12 or later. With this option, you can mount writable VSS snapshots of FULL or COPY backups.

Note: You can override your default mount options as specified in the configuration file by using either the /MOUNTRW parameter on the mount backup command, or the Mount-DpExcBackup cmdlet.

Procedure

  1. Start MMC.
  2. Click Recover Data in the welcome page of MMC.
  3. In the Actions pane on the Recover tab, click Mount Backup.
  4. Either type the path to the empty NTFS or ReFS folder where you want to mount the backup or browse to find the path. Click OK.
    On the Recover tab, the backup that you mounted is displayed.
  5. Optional: If required, select the Mount the snapshots in read/write mode option.
  6. In the Actions pane, select the Explore and Unmount Backup tasks for the backup that you mounted.