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Product Overview

Features and Benefits

Technical Overview

System Requirements

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Ontrack® PowerControls™ Comparative Analysis with Exchange 20003 Recovery Storage Group

A powerful tool for copying and searching mailbox, reporting data directly from an un-mounted Exchange database (.edb) file or the live Exchange Server

Power Controls

Product Overview

Ontrack® PowerControls™  - The NEW PowerControls 4.0 product features significant enhancements, giving customers the most powerful mailbox recovery software available. New features and benefits include new ExtractWizard Agents supporting CommVault Galaxy and UltraBac Software backup formats, a new PowerControls Agent for Advanced Searching allowing users to search within attachment text for user-defined keywords or phrases, Public Folders as Target allowing users to open public folders as a target for public folder or message restores, a new reporting feature providing statistical analysis on any combination of stores completely offline from the production Exchange Server, multiple search session capabilities allowing users to search using different criteria on any combination of stores simultaneously, and the ability for users to save search criteria to a file for later retrieval.

PowerControls is a simple, yet powerful tool for copying and searching mailbox data directly from an un-mounted Exchange database (.edb) file. This new product offering takes advantage of our expertise and over 17 years worth of data recovery experience, and uses that knowledge to help network storage managers, network administrators, email administrators, and help desk administrators to better serve their internal clients.

Wouldn't you like to easily restore .edb files? Let's face it, not every request to restore email files is an emergency - you end up saying "no" more than you would like. PowerControls will help you meet those requests while saving you time and effort in the process.

PowerControls let's you restore single mailboxes, individual folders, or any number of messages and attachments to any mailbox on the network or directly into an Outlook .pst file on your local drive - and we aren't talking about hours of work. An easy-to-use interface allows you to interact with the files just like you do with Microsoft® Outlook®.

PowerControls works with your existing Exchange backup software and allows you to quickly and easily restore message-level items from any previous full backup.  After all, a backup program is only as good as its ability to restore lost data.  No more need for time consuming and expensive single mailbox ("brick-level") backups.  Just perform a full backup of your Exchange server and let PowerControls restore individual mailboxes, folders, messages, attachments, even calendar, notes, contact, task items directly to your production Exchange server or any PST file.

You can also easily search and create copies of all archived email that match a set of criteria based on keywords, recipients, senders, dates, and search for all files as they appear in Microsoft Outlook - calendar items, tasks, notes, journal entries, etc.

Features and Benefits

Power Controls Key Features:

• Extractwizard restores previous online backups - Through these add-on components (an additional fee per component), PowerControls can be customized to fit your unique system's needs. Each PowerControls ExtractWizard Agent provides two methods (Direct and Advanced) to read your backups. The Direct Method of extracting backed-up Exchange data reads the tape or disk file directly without needing the original backup software installed. This method is useful if the original backup software is unavailable and you know the tapes on which the Exchange Information Store backups reside. The Advanced Method uses your existing backup software to extract an Exchange database from a backup server or tape library, across the network, to the computer running ExtractWizard. The Advanced Method takes full advantage of your backup software’s knowledge of individual set locations and robotic library support. This is the fastest method to extract an Exchange Information Store from the most recent backups managed by your backup server. For additional information on ExtractWizard, see the PowerControls User Guide.
• Enhanced search and analysis capabilities. To learn more, see our add-on components  page.
• Restore previous online backups to alternate locations that aren't an Exchange Server - This new feature in PowerControls helps eliminate the need to restore an online backup to a duplicate Exchange Server...better known as a "Recovery Server."  This new feature can save you a day or more in work in setting up a Recovery Server.  If your Recovery Server is already set up with PowerControls ExtractWizard, you can now devote that server to another purpose, saving you money!

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• Copy messages and attachments from un-mounted Exchange server - Copy messages and attachments directly from an un-mounted Exchange information store file (.edb file) and save them directly to a mailbox on a live Exchange server or to an Outlook PST file.

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• Support for the five types of Exchange backups - The Exchange Server database, also known as the "Information Store," is made up of .edb, .stm, and .log files. PowerControls now supports the entire contents of the information store and supports all Exchange backup types including offline, online, incremental, differential, and copy backup.

• Search for keywords/criteria in one or all mailboxes - Search one or all mailboxes in an archive for matching keywords or criteria without first creating a duplicate Exchange server. Advanced search capabilities help you quickly find the email messages you are looking for.
   
  
   
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• Easily restore single mailboxes - Restore a single mailbox easily from a full backup without having to set up a duplicate Exchange server first. What used to take hours can now be done in just minutes.

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• Seamless integration and operation - PowerControls uses the native Microsoft Messaging APIs (MAPI) to ensure reliable and consistent Exchange Server operation and seamless integration. No changes to existing backup procedures are required.

• Easy to use interface - Say goodbye to command-line software, and hello to an easy-to-use graphic interface that allows you to drag and drop your email.
   

• Copy duplicates or only unique messages - Copy duplicate or unique email messages saved in different archives - ensuring you can get a complete record of emails and not have overlap.

• New Reporting feature providing statistical analysis on any combination of stores completely offline from the production Exchange Server.

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Additional Features:

• Support for double-byte and Unicode messages.

• Support for Microsoft Exchange 5.5, 2000, and 2003.

• Supports Outlook 97, Outlook 2000, Outlook XP and Outlook 2003 PST files.

• Supports Exchange server .edb and .stm files.

• Support for Exchange server .log files - enabling support for incremental, differential, and copy backup methods for Exchange.

• Requires no changes to existing backup procedures to implement.

• Quickly view PST files without the hassles of waiting to import the file into Outlook first.

• For recovering multiple mailboxes, multi-mailbox copy feature automatically connects to each mailbox during the copy process.

• Copy feature supports preservation of mailbox folder hierarchy from search results window.

• Restores selected messages and attachments from a previous full backup and copies them directly into the single mailbox in minutes, not hours.

• Easily view any PST file created by any version of Microsoft Outlook, no need to import the PST file into Outlook first.

• ExtractWizard can save and restore an ExtractWizard catalog file - saving time if restoring multiple times from the same tape.

• Ability to view email attachments - by click on the attachments, PowerControls will launch the associated application to view that attachment.

• Eliminate brick-level backups.

• No extra storage required. PowerControls does not require you to make or save backups in a new or redundant way.

• Supports NT4 Server, NT Workstation, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home, and Windows XP Professional.

• Restore messages to a different Exchange Server or PST file.

• User interface shows which messages are deleted but still held in deleted retention.

• Recovers distribution lists in the Contacts folder.

• About Information Store dialog, shows statistics and details of .edb, .stm and .log files.

• Doesn't have to be installed prior to its first use and works with any existing copy of your Exchange Server database.

• PowerControls is safe and does not install on your Exchange server.

• Non-evasive - does not write to or modify your Exchange server files.

• Recovers complete mailboxes, folders, or individual messages including email, attachments, address book, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes.

• Recover Microsoft Exchange Public Folders database items.

• Restore messages with all message properties preserved - including original date and time.

• Easily view any PST file created by any version of Microsoft Outlook, no need to import the .PST file into Outlook first.

• "Exclude" search function performs Boolean NOT operation - allowing you to exclude messages matching certain words or phrases from the search result.

• Search window supports "search again" function allowing you to refine the search process using the previous search results.

• Displays time remaining during copy progress.

• View message subject, message body, and the names of file attachments.

• EasyUpdate™ feature.

Technical Overview

As most Exchange administrators know, the nature of Exchange backups, combined with Exchange's database structure, can make data recovery very difficult. All this does is leave administrators with difficult choices to make when deciding on a backup strategy.

PowerControls mailbox recovery software solves the problem by allowing administrators to restore individual messages, mailboxes, attachments, and even notes, contacts and tasks from a previous full backup. The software can directly read .edb files so there is no need to do a brick-level backup to restore individual messages and mailboxes. PowerControls lets you search across all mailboxes in an archive .edb file, rather than searching one mailbox at a time or bringing an old backup back online for analysis. You can search by a variety of criteria, including keywords, subject, date, and specific users. Individual mailboxes need not be backed up because they can be restored directly from an .edb file.

PowerControls does not require you to change your normal backup process - it works in concert with your current backup procedures. And if you change those procedures, it will with them as well. Additionally, PowerControls will work with backups that you have already done, so you can restore data from any backups that exist prior to installing PowerControls.

How PowerControls Works

To better understand how you use PowerControls, you need an understanding of the PowerControls architecture. The key to PowerControls is its ability to directly read .edb files. Using it requires no change to backup procedures - rather, it works after a backup has been completed. The schematic below shows you how PowerControls works.  

Step 1: As normal, backup software backs up an Exchange database and creates Exchange backup sets.

Step 2: The PowerControls ExtractWizard restores the database to an alternate location that is not an Exchange server, as shown in Step 2.
Note: For those backup formats currently not supported by ExtractWizard, the Exchange backup software restores the database to an alternate location that is not an Exchange server.

Lastly...

Step 3: PowerControls can now be used to view and search through individual mailboxes, messages and attachments, as shown in Step 3.

Step 4: PowerControls can restore a single mailbox, messages or attachments back to the production Exchange server, or to a new or existing .PST file at another location.

System Requirements

To use PowerControls you will need access to a complete .edb file. To most quickly restore a previous .edb from tape, we offer the recommendations below.

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Note: This software is designed for corporate business and is not appropriate for individual use.

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