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The ability to restore a deleted accounts or restore a functional account into a completely new account is one of Zextras suite features that greatly facilitate the works of Zimbra system administrators by providing them with simple to run, powerful and fast functionalities. This tool is a part of the Zextras backup and restore system, accessible from the command-line and administration console.
What Is Restoring Deleted Accounts
Zextras suite features a very useful mechanism to protect mailbox contents including folder structure and all user data. The feature ensures that mailboxes won’t be lost in the event of accidental deletion or modification. This feature is fully integrated into the Zextras backup and restore functionality and can be easily used by system administrators to instantly take control over the situation when required.
Please note that we are talking about two functionalities:
- Restoring a deleted account into a new account
- Restoring a functional account into a new account
Both the functionalities allow you to restore the mailbox contents of a certain time into a newly created account.
There are some minor differences between the two:
- In the case of a deleted account, the mailbox can be restored with the same account ID
- In the case of a functional account, the mailbox is restored with a new account ID
Why Restoring an Account?
Imagine you need to recover an account as it’s not working or accidentally deleted because of some hardware failure. Needless to say, it takes a lot of time and resources to roll back the whole store in order to recover the account. In such situations, the Zextras suite saves your day by allowing you to restore this account to a prior point in time as needed.
How It Works
For you to have a clearer idea, we can summarize the whole procedure into three phases; first, a new account is created as the destination account, then if there exist any items in the source account, transferred to the destination maintaining folder structure, and finally, corresponding backed-up items of the source will be restored.
Let’s see how simple is to restore an account using the Zextras suite.
Administration Console
To restore a deleted account via the backup zimlet,
- Log in to the administration console,
- Select Zextras Backup in the left pane,
- Select Restore Deleted Account,
- Choose the date and click Next,
- Select the source account,
- Enter the destination account name,
- Click Finish.
To restore a deleted account via the accounts list,
- Log in to the administration console,
- Select Accounts in the left pane,
- Select the source account,
- Select Restore button on top,
- Select Restore on New Account mode,
- Enter the destination account name,
- Choose the date and click Next,
- Click Finish.
Command-line
CLI command for this functionality is very simple to use.
To restore a functional account into a new one you can use zxsuite backup doRestoreOnNewAccount providing the source account, destination account, and date.
For example,
zxsuite backup doRestoreOnNewAccount john@example.com john_restored@example.com "01/01/2020 12:00:00"
will restore the account john@example.com in a new account named john_restored@example.com based on the specified date.
To learn more about Account Restore in detail you can read restore Restore Deleted Account and Restore on New Account on the Zextras documentation website.
