Exchange Administrator Paleontologist and the Email Past

If you’re an Exchange administrator, you’re probably all too familiar with the requests from your Human Resources or Legal departments asking you to restore and search emails for an employee that has been terminated and no longer stored deep within the layers of Active Directory. These requests are always a little different from the previous discovery effort.  It’s like a paleontologist getting a call saying, “there’s a fossil somewhere in South America, go retrieve it.”

But have no fear.  You’re an Exchange Administrator Paleontologist—digging things up is part of the job. Even before you’re your shovel hits the ground, there is a lot of research to do.

If you’re lucky enough, the user’s mailbox might still be in the system, but what if it isn’t and the data needs to be pulled from tape? Now you’ve got to figure out which database the user was in and that could be any number of databases from any number of years ago depending on the size of your company.  Oh, and you better hope those tapes are cataloged correctly!  Furthermore, if you have to bring the old backups online, now you have to ensure there are storage resources available—there will be a battle with the storage team if you have to restore multiple backup sets to find what you ‘re looking for.  Having so many variables in a project like this can make even the simplest of requests lead you down several different paths—all of these paths consuming your valuable time.

It’s a trial and error every time if you’re not given a solid starting point, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  Digging up the past doesn’t have to be difficult.  You can save yourself a lot of time with the right tools.

And that’s what Ontrack PowerControls is all about – providing the tools to save you time.

The software allows you to restore individual messages, mailboxes, attachments, notes, contacts, and tasks from a previous full disk or tape backup or from a snapshot. It can directly read EDB files, so there’s no need for doing a brick-level backup to restore individual messages and mailboxes. You can quickly discard the files that aren’t relevant to the request and get on to the next “dig site.”

So, put all those antiquated tools away and leave the pickaxe at home, because you can discover what you’re  after faster and more efficiently with Ontrack PowerControls.