Microsoft Exchange Supported Mailbox Backup Configurations

Microsoft Exchange and SQL

The Exchange add-on for Retrospect for Windows allows users to backup the Exchange Database/Storage Group as well as do a backup of the mailboxes at a granular level. Retrospect leverages MAPI for the granular mailbox backup but due to limited Microsoft support for MAPI there are some Exchange configuration scenarios that are not supported. Here is the list of supported configurations.

Supported Configurations

• Exchange 2003: All configurations
• Exchange 2007: All configurations
• Exchange 2010: Individual Mailbox level backup only supported if the Client Access Server role is installed on the same server as the Mailbox role. Database backup always supported.
• Exchange 2013: All configurations
• Exchange 2016: Database backup fully supported with Retrospect 11 for Windows. Individual Mailbox level backup is not available.

If your Exchange configuration is not one that is listed then Retrospect will backup the Database(s) only. You can still recover individual mailboxes/messages from a database backup. You can restore the database backup into a recovery database and use the Exchange Management Shell to recover individual mailboxes/messages. If a recovery database is created Retrospect will automatically restore the database into it rather than on top of the running database. Here is an article on how to create a recovery database and how to use the EMS to recovery mailbox data from it.

Last Update: March 1, 2016