Backup Restore Strategies

Restore strategies are required in different scenarios, which may change according to the actors involved, the scope and extent of the restore, and the purpose. Some examples of these scenarios are:

• the accidental deletion of emails, as a result of an end-user error like for example emptying the Trash can folder

• a problem on the file system, which may cause reading and writing errors and therefore make some parts of an account inaccessible

• administrative errors for example during an undelete process

• an account has being compromised because its credentials were stolen or obtained by fraudulent means

• an account is being under investigation, and its complete history is needed by the enforcement authorities

In all these cases, data in a mailbox can be recovered and, depending on the destination of the recovered data, restore strategies are grouped in two categories: recovery on the same server—​or same infrastructure—​and recovery on a different infrastructure.

Same infrastructure restore

These strategies are meant to be used when you need to restore only part of an account on the same server as the origin server. In this category fall Single Item Restore, Restore on New Account, Time-range Undelete, and Restore Account.

Different infrastructure restore

When the restore process is not possible or not feasible on the same infrastructure as the original, the possibility is to use the External Restore strategy.

It is important to remark that items in Carbonio Backup are labelled as deleted only after they have been removed from a mailbox following a Backup Purge operation; until that moment they are still available.

Finally, all restore strategies:

• can be executed from the CLI only, except for Restore Account

• recover items at a given moment (or interval) in time, which implies that also their status at that time is recovered

• recover an item in a different folder than the original one

• always send an email to the initiator of the restore procedure and to the administrator, at the beginning and end of the procedure

Note

Disaster Recovery is now part of the Backup Advanced Techniques Chapter, because it is intended more as a last-resort technique in case something wreaked havoc on your infrastructure, than a restore strategy.

How to obtain the itemID

The itemID is one of the metadata of an item and consists of an unambiguous code that uniquely identifies an object in a mailbox.

Along with all other metadata about an item, the itemID is assigned by the server and stored in a file inside the items directory of the proper account under the directory:

[backup path]/accounts/[accountID]/items/[last 2 digits of itemID]/[itemID]

For example, when a new email message arrives, the log file may show an entry like:

2020-07-18 12:22:01,495 INFO [btpool0-4361://localhost/service/soap/MsgActionRequest]
[name=user@example.com;mid=2538;oip=258.236.789.647;ua=zclient/7.2.4_GA_2900;]
mailop - adding Message (id=339) to Folder Inbox (id=1)`

Recognise an item’s ID

• Backup_path: /opt/zextras/backup/ng/

• Account ID: 4a217bb3-6861-4c9f-80f8-f345ae2897b5

• Item ID: 2057

This item, and all its associated metadata is located in:

/opt/zextras/backup/zextras/accounts/4a217bb3-6861-4c9f-80f8-f345ae2897b5/items/57/2057

As a regular user, there is only one possibility to find the itemID: select a message and then from the Options menu (the rightmost icon on top right corner of the email the click Show original. In the URL that will open, similar to the one below, the id is the trailing part, in this case 2057:

https://mail.example.com/service/home/~/?auth=co&view=text&id=2057

All item’s metadata are stored in a plain text file, so Linux tools like grep and find can be combined to search for items and their content. To see the metadata contained in a file in a more readable format, you can use the carbonio backup getItem command, whose syntax is carbonio backup getItem {account} {item} [attr1 value1 [attr2 value2...]]

Options in {curly braces} are mandatory:

• account is the ID of an account

• item is the itemID

Usage example:

zextras$ carbonio backup getitem 4a217bb3-6861-4c9f-80f8-f345ae2897b5 2057

In case the message is no longer available, for example because it was removed from the trash bin, it is still possible to obtain it by looking at the mailbox.log log file and searching for one of the other metadata of the message, like for example the time when it was deleted, the sender or recipient, the content and so on. This method however is valid only with administrative access, so in case you do not have them, you need to ask to your admin for assistance.

Example log entry

In the above example, the item with id 339 is moved to the trash folder and soon after the folder is removed:

2020-07-18 15:22:01,495 INFO [btpool0-4361://localhost/service/soap/MsgActionRequest]
[name=user@example.com;mid=2538;oip=258.236.789.647;ua=zclient/7.2.4_GA_2900;]
mailop - moving Message (id=339) to Folder Trash (id=3)

2020-07-18 15:25:08,962 INFO  [btpool0-4364://localhost/service/soap/FolderActionRequest]
[name=user@example.com;mid=2538;oip=258.236.789.647;ua=zclient/7.2.4_GA_2900;]
mailbox - Emptying 9 items from /Trash, removeSubfolders=true.

Single Item Restore

The Single Item Restore is one of the Restore Modes available in Carbonio Backup and allows to restore one item at a time, recovering its status even if it was deleted.

Single Item Restore takes the itemID and restores the corresponding item from the backup to the owner’s account. Any type of item can be restored this way.

Running a Single Item Restore

To start an Item Restore operation, use the command

zextras$ carbonio backup doItemRestore {Account name or id} {item_id} [attr1 value1 [attr2 value2...]]

Restore on New Account

The Restore on New Account and the Restore Account procedures allow you to restore the content of a mailbox as it was in a given moment in time. The differences between the two are in the status of the account and in how the mailbox will be restored: If the account was deleted, it can be restored with the same accountID (Account Restore), whereas if the account is still in use, it is possible to restore it into a completely new account, i.e., with a completely new accountID.

The source account is not changed in any way, so it is possible to recover one or more deleted items in a user’s account without actually rolling back the whole mailbox. When you run this kind of restore, you can choose to hide the newly created account from the GAL as a security measure.

This procedure is useful in several scenarios: when a whole account has been deleted or is no longer operational, as either the result of an external problem (hardware or filesystem failure), or a human mistake (like e.g., a wrong delete/purge operation launched by the user or system administrator).

When a Restore on New Account procedure starts, a new account is created, called the Destination Account. All the items existing in the source account at the selected moment in time are recreated in the destination account, including the folder structure and all the user’s data.

Warning

When restoring data on a new account, shared items consistency is not preserved. This is because the original share rules refer to the original account’s ID, not to the restored account.

Running a Restore on New Account

To start a Restore on New Account via the CLI, use the doRestoreOnNewAccount command.

zextras$ carbonio backup doRestoreOnNewAccount Account name or id destination_account "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"|last [param VALUE[,VALUE]]

Parameter List

NAME	TYPE	EXPECTED VALUES	DEFAULT
source_account(M)	String	Account name or id
destination_account(M)	Account Name/ID
date(M)	Date	“dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss”| last	last
restore_chat_buddies(O)	Boolean	true | false
apply_hsm(O)	Boolean	true | false
notifications(O)	Email Address[,..]
restore_datasource(O)	Boolean	true|false	true

(M) == mandatory parameter, (O) == optional parameter

Usage Example

zextras$ carbonio backup doRestoreOnNewAccount john@example.com john_restored@example.com "28/03/2023 09:29:49"

Restores the account in a new account named in the same condition as it was on the 28 March 2023 at 09:29:49

Hint

At the end of the operation, you can check that the configuration of the new mailbox is the same by running the command carbonio config dump

Time-range Undelete

Time-range Undelete, also called Undelete Restore is a Restore Mode that allows an administrator to restore from a mailbox all items, removed from the Trash folder within a given interval of time, and recover their status to the last change of status.

During a Time-range Undelete, the Carbonio Backup engine searches the backup datastore for items flagged as DELETED in the selected time range, and restores them in the source folder of the mailbox. All the restored items will be tagged with a string named undelete_DD_MM_YY, in which DD_MM_YY represents the date when the undelete has been made.

The structure of the undeleted items is preserved, with each subfolder restored using its latest attribute available in the time window that is being restored. If no information is available, the folder will be called unknown_XX.

Hint

By using the CLI it is possible to restore items under a dedicated folder. Moreover, the undelete_DD_MM_YY tag can be used to filter items in the mailbox. A few examples can be find in the section Running a Time-range Undelete.

Corner cases

There are two points that is worth highlighting:

1. In case an item or folder for some reason had the trash bin as its first position and this was its only position, they will be restored in the trash bin.

2. Suppose you have a folder called Conference 2021, then delete all of the item it contains and rename it to Conference 2022. You later—​on 15th of November 2021—​carry out an Undelete Restore on the mailbox. All of the items and content will be restored under folder Conference 2021 and tagged as undelete_15_11_21.

Warning

To deal with IMAP-deleted emails in a more comfortable way for the user, during the Time-range Undelete the deleted IMAP flag will be stripped from any restored item, for the item itself to be visible in the Administration Console.

Running a Time-range Undelete

To start a Time-range Undelete operation, use the carbonio backup doUndelete command.

Hint

At the end of the operation, you can check that the configuration of the new mailbox is the same by running the command carbonio config dump (See zextras_config_full_cli).

External Restore

The External Restore allow to import backups that were produced on a different infrastructure, which is useful for setting up a test environment that resembles the production environment, and for advanced tasks like migration—​of accounts or of whole domains—​or disaster recovery. Moreover, it is the only strategy for which the source server and the destination server could not be the same.

An interesting and useful functionality of External Restore is that besides the data, it restores also all the shares of an account.

Note

It is possible to run an External Restore with the same infrastructure as destination, but this is a rather advanced technique and will be discussed in the Backup Advanced Techniques Chapter.

The External Restore reads data, metadata, and configuration from the Backup Path on the source server and copies them on a new server. The procedure consists of a workflow with a number of steps, and is outlined below, divided into three Phases.

A typical scenario in which External Restore proves useful: you have to migrate a server from the infrastructure you have in Rome to the one you have in Milan. The basic access requirement is that from the Milan server (the destination) you need to have access to the Backup Path on the Rome server (the source), in order to carry out the External restore on your Milan infrastructure.

Skip Domain Provisioning

While the External Restore is typically used on a whole infrastructure, nonetheless it can be applied also to individual or multiple accounts: in this case, only the data and metadata that belong to those accounts will be restored, whereas domain-level customisations (including COS, GAL, quota, and so on) will not be restored. This task can be carried out by using the skip_domain_provisioning parameter, like in the following example, that restores only the accounts john and alice in domain example.com:

zextras$ carbonio backup doexternalrestore  /opt/backup/zextras/ accounts john@example.com,alice@example.com domains example.com skip_domain_provisioning true

The workflow described below does not apply when using the skip_domain_provisioning parameter: since all domain configuration will not be impacted, in Phase 1 only the Restore all Accounts’ attributes step will be executed.

Important

Two points of the External Restore must be highlighted:

1. The External Restore is quite a complex and resource-intensive procedure; to minimise its impact on the current server’s operations, read the Before You Start section below for a few tips.

2. All commands and operations must be run on the destination server.

PHASE 1

• Operation Started notification

• Read Server Backup Data

• Create empty Domains

• Create needed COS (only those effectively used by the imported accounts)

• Create empty DLs

• Create empty Accounts

• Restore all Accounts’ attributes

• Restore all Domains’ attributes

• Restore all DLs’ attributes and share information

• PHASE 1 Feedback Notification

PHASE 2

• Restore all Items

PHASE 3

• Restore all Mountpoints and Datasources

• Operation Ended notification with complete feedback

Folder Restore

Suppose you have created a folder called Inbox/Zextras(which is also its Backup Path), and later deleted from it some messages, which are in some backup. When an External Restore is carried out, those messages are restored, along with any existent message, in the Inbox/Zextras folder. In other words, since the restored folder shares the same Backup Path with an existing folder, then the restored messages end up there.

In more details, the following happens:

Local folder

If a folder with the same path was already created by a filter, the backup folder id will be mapped to the existing folder id. Moreover, all items that were in the original folder will be restored to the same path.

Remote mailbox

If a folder with that same path was already created by a filter, the mountpoint will be restored. Additionally, all items in the folder (created by the filter) are moved to the mountpoint target; also the filter to write to the restored mountpoint will be updated.

Before You Start

It is assumed that you have already installed a new vanilla infrastructure; that is, a new Zextras instance without having yet done any operation or configuration on it besides a standard installation.

The first task to carry out, indeed, is to define a Backup Path on the new infrastructure, unless you want to use the default one (/opt/zextras/backup/zextras), and initialize the Backup.

Moreover, to reduce the overall overhead and load on the server during the External Restore, you can implement the following suggestions.

1. If Carbonio Backup is already initialized on the destination server, disable the RealTime Scanner to improve both memory usage and I/O performance

2. To reduce the I/O overhead and the amount of disk space used for the migration, advanced users may tweak or disable the RedoLog for the duration of the import

3. To further reduce the amount of disk space used, it is possible to enable compression on your current primary volume before starting the import. If you do not wish to use a compressed primary volume after migration, it is possible to create a new and uncompressed primary volume, set it to Current and switch the old one to Secondary. This operation is possible by using the powerstore component.

4. If you plan to use the CLI, check also section Speeding up the Restore through Multithreading

Running an External Restore

To start an External Restore operation, use the doExternalRestore <carbonio_backup_doExternalRestore> command:

zextras$ carbonio backup doExternalRestore *source_path* [param VALUE[,VALUE]]

Usage example

zextras$ carbonio backup doExternalRestore /path/to/data/ accounts john@example.com,jack@example.com domains example.com filter_deleted false skip_system_accounts false

Restores the example.com domain, including all system accounts, and the and accounts from a backup located in /path/to/data/

Hint

At the end of the operation, you can check that the configuration of the new mailbox is the same by running the command carbonio config dump (See zextras_config_full_cli).

Speeding up the Restore through Multithreading

The concurrent_accounts parameter allows you to restore multiple accounts at the same time, thus greatly speeding up the restore process. This feature is available via CLI only.

Usage example:

zextras$ carbonio backup doExternalRestore /tmp/external1 domains example0.com,example1.com concurrent_accounts 5

Restores the example0.com and example1.com domain, excluding system accounts, restoring 5 accounts at same time from a backup located in /tmp/external1

Warning

Albeit resource consumption does not grow linearly with the number of accounts restored at the same time, it can easily become taxing. Start from a low number of concurrent accounts, and raise it according to your server’s performance.

After the Restore: Message Deduplication

Running a volume-wide deduplication with the Zextras Powerstore component is highly recommended after an External Restore, since the native deduplication system might be ineffective when sequentially importing accounts.