In today’s communication-driven world, Exchange Server plays a crucial role in businesses for managing email communication. The increased dependency on Exchange Server also requires you to be prepared against the risks of phishing emails, malware attacks, and natural or other disasters that can result in server failure and data corruption.
For this reason,you must also prepare a checklist on how to recover the server and data in case of any disaster or other issue. In this article, we will list some important steps that are needed to recover the server and databases. We will cover the native options, along with their pros and cons and also a third-party Exchange recovery tool that can help decrease the recovery time while ensuring a smooth and swift recovery process.
Exchange Server Recovery – A Step-by-Step Checklist
Follow the below checklist before you would dive into the full recovery of the server/databases.
- Backups are important for the daily work and also when the disaster strikes. You must ensure that the backups are taken on a regular basis and are tested as well. Before going for the recovery, you must ensure that you would have the latest backup in hand.
- When rebuilding the server, documentation is a crucial part to ensure that every change has been documented. This should include the operating system version, network configuration, storage configuration, the Exchange Server version and Cumulative Update level, roles, custom configuration, and all the steps needed from the installation of the server to the customization of the server.
- You should have the exact media in hand for the installation of the operating system as well as the Exchange Server.
- A copy of the certificates or the possibility to have a copy of the certificates installed on the Exchange Server with their respective passwords.
Recovering the Exchange Server
Once there is a go-ahead from the business stakeholders for the full recovery of server and data, recovering Exchange server is the easiest process. All the configuration of the Exchange Server/s from the infrastructure is stored in the Active Directory Schema and can be retrieved using the installation of the Exchange Server. There are some limitations to this process,such as:
- This restores the server’s configuration only and no data.
- Certificates are not stored in the schema.
- Custom Send/Receive connectors would need to be recreated.
The process involves rebuilding the server as per the documentation.This would include the installation of same operating system with the same computer name and network configuration, including the same IP Address.
The next step is to setup the storage – same as the old server and with the same drive letters. Once this is done and the server is joined to the Active Directory, and the installation media of the Exchange Server is in hand, you can start the installation.
For this, run the setup.exe file using the recoverserver(see the below example).
Setup.exe /Mode:RecoverServer
Once it is finished, you would have the Exchange Server installation complete but without certificates and custom connectors. Only once these are setup, you can move to the recovery of databases from backup.
Recovering the Database
In case the server is lost and unrecoverable, and the recovery process using the ESEUtilis unsuccessful due to corrupted transaction logs or databases, the only option is to recover the database from the last successful backup.
Once the database is restored to the original location, you can run the following command to check its status.
eseutil /mh “<path-to-database\database-file.edb”
If the state is Dirty Shutdown, you will not be able to mount the database until this is change to Clean Shutdown. You can start by trying the soft recovery by using the below command:
eseutil /r E00 /l “<full-path-to-transaction-logs>” /d “<path-to-database\database-name”
This command will replay the transaction logs and should fix the problem. Now, run the eseutil /mhcommand.The state should show Clean Shutdown. At this stage, the database should be able to mount and the users should be able to connect to their mailboxes and resume their work.
HowThird-PartyExchange Recovery Tools can Help?
In the case of the server rebuilding process, the data will be restored from backup. But restoring even from a day old backup can result in data loss. If the database is damaged or corrupted, you can use the smooth recovery process. However, this process will take time and not work if the transaction logs are missing or corrupted.
Specialized Exchange recovery tool,such as Stellar Repair for Exchange, can overcome these challenges. With this tool,you can independently open standalone databases from any version of Exchange Server in any state and of any size. After a quick or deep scan, you will be presented with the entire structure of the database.Here,you can browse the emails and other items in full HTML preview.
You can granularly export the mailboxes and other items from the EDB file to PST and other file formats. You can also export directly to a live Exchange Server or Office 365 tenant with automatic mailbox matching, priority exports, and parallel export. This makes the recovery process much faster, and with minimal impact and no data loss.
Conclusion
There are drastic repercussions when an Exchange Server goes down. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you have a checklist ready for Exchange Server recovery. When the management decision is taken to recover the server from scratch and restore the databases from backup, you should have the media, documentation, and the backups in hand.For smooth and fast database recovery, you can rely on Exchange recovery tools, like Stellar Repair for Exchange.
