Performing Document Level Backups and Restores › How to Perform Brick Level Restores on Exchange 2003 Systems › Backup Agent Service Account Requirements for Brick Level Restore

Backup Agent Service Account Requirements for Brick Level Restore

To perform a brick level restore job, your backup agent service account must meet the following criteria on the Exchange Server.

• The account must be that of a domain user with a mailbox on the local Exchange server, and the mailbox name must be unique. A unique name is a name that does not exist in the organization as a subset of characters in another mailbox name. For example, you cannot use the name Admin, if there is a mailbox named Administrator in your organization.
• You must add the account to the Domain Administrators group on your domain controllers and to the Administrators group and Backup Operators group on your Exchange Server.

  Note: If your Exchange Server is your domain controller, you must add all three groups to your backup agent service account only on your domain controller.

• You must assign the account the rights that follow:
  • Act as part of the operating system
  • Log on locally
  • Log on as service
• You must assign roles at the Organization, Site, and Configuration levels of the organization tree to the account.
• You must assign the account the Owner permission level on every public folder that you intend to back up and restore because permissions for public folders can vary. If a lower permission level is assigned, back up or restore may fail or duplicate items may be restored because the backup agent service account does not have the permission to delete original documents.

The Exchange Brick Level Agent Configuration Utility is the most efficient tool for creating your backup agent service account and ensuring that it is set up correctly. However, if because of the setup of your environment it is better for you to manually create a backup agent service account, see How to Set Up Your Backup Agent Service Account for instructions on how to do so.