ZCS Administrator Guide 8.0

Network Edition

Restore Mailboxes When Mail Server Is Down

The offline restore process can only be run when the mailboxd server is not running. In general, offline restore is run under the following circumstances:

Certain components of the Zimbra server are corrupted, and the server cannot be started. For example, the data in LDAP or the database are corrupted.

A disaster requires the Zimbra software to be reinstalled on the server.

The offline restore must be run before the ZCS mailbox store server is started to keep the redo logs in sequence.

In a disaster recovery when the Zimbra software is reinstalled, if mailboxd is started before the backup files are restored, the mail server would begin to accept email messages and perform other activities, producing redo logs in the process. Since the pre-disaster data have not been restored to the server, the redo logs would be out of sequence. Once mailboxd is running, it would be too late to restore the pre-disaster data.

The offline restore process goes through the following steps.

1.	Specified accounts to be restored are retrieved. If the command-line does not specify any mailbox address, the list of all mailboxes on the specified mail host are retrieved from Zimbra LDAP directory server.

2.	Iterates through each mailbox:

a.	Deletes the mailbox on the server to clear any existing data

b.	Restores the last full backup of the MySQL data, the index directory, and the message directory for that mailbox

c.	Replays redo logs in all incremental backups since last full backup

d.	Replays all archived redo logs for that mailbox, from the redo log archive area on the mailbox server

e.	Replays the current redo log

Restore All Accounts

1.	Restore all accounts on server1 when mailboxd is stopped

zmrestoreoffline -a all

2.	Start mailboxd after the offline restore is complete

zmcontrol startup