Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Disaster Recovery (Soft Recovery) - Exchange 2003

After an unexpected shutdown of the Exchange Server, the Information Stores in One Storage Group goes dismounted. Gave an error message while mounting.
Checked the state of the databases by eseutil /mh and there it shows dirty shutdown.

Here it can be that one of the database is not up-to-date and the server got rebooted when it was processing one of the transactions and got corrupted.

Our next step in this case is to identify the store that has been corrupted.

We will try to replay the logfiles on the each of the stores individually:
  • Renamed priv2.edb and priv2.stb.
  • Replayed the logfiles: eseutil /r /i E00
  • Error Encountered. So log files cannot be replayed for Information Store 1 (priv1.edb, priv1.stm)
  • Now Renamed priv1.edb and priv1.stm.
  • Replayed the logfiles: eseutil/ r /i E00
  • Completed Successfully. So the Information Store 2 is up to date now and we are able to mount it.

Now as the Information Store 1 is corrupted, the best practice is to restore from the last backup and then make the database up to date by recovering from the present log files.Eseutil /p should be the last resort as it performs the hard recovery and punches off the corrupted tables or entries from the database. So there is always a good chance of loss of some data.


As we have renamed priv1.edb and priv1.stm, the database restore from the backup will create new set of these files. We should not overwrite these files from the restore.

The Restore of backup (Veritas in this Case) should be set with the following options:

  • Do not replay logs automatically
  • Do not mount databases
  • No Loss restore (don't overwrite or delete anything)

After the restore, we have the new set of edb and stm (a day old) and the current log files that will make them up to date.
Now we will use "ESEUTIL /CC" command to replay to restore.env file and continue on to production log files. There are temporary log files and restore.env file created when we run the restore. In case of Veritas restore, they are created in C:\temp\

Restore.env file is just a temporary environmental file holding path information about the data. Its purpose is to help the Exchange 2003 restore process find its files and match them with the corresponding email stores.

Now run the command eseutil /cc "path of restore.env"

Mount the store back after it completes successfully.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said.

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Viagra Online said...

To be chaste the Eseutil should be the last resort as it performs the hard recovery and punches off the corrupted tables, this is the main effect as a realistic result. I think we need more information about this approaches mentioned above.

Unknown said...

Hmm...that's fantastic post...i appreciate with that. thanks!! :)

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Alex said...

For backup and recovery MS Exchange data you can use Exchange mailbox recovery. It owns all necessary capabilities such as working under all Windows OS and with all software configurations of your PC. The program doesn't modify source data of edb during recovering.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot. It is giving clear picture.

Unknown said...

Hello,
Thanks a lot for this highly informative post. But it has been observed that in severe situations ESEUTIL fails to deliver expected result. However there is Exchange recovery tool developed by Stellar, which can provide corrupted or lost data of user in accessible condition.

Unknown said...

Good article, it provides the information related to exchange disaster recovery, i used the automated tool from http://www.lepide.com/exchange-manager/ that recovers corrupt Exchange database as well as restores selected mailboxes from backup and transfer mails to them from OST, EDB, PST or Live Exchange Server

smithjake said...

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haileleon09 said...

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jonhwillam said...

Try stella exchange email recovery software to recover your exchange email in to pst. Stella exchange email recovery software recover all the email of the exchange edb file. stella exchange email recovery software recover unmounted exchange edb file email and other items in to the pst file. stella exchange email recovery software recover corrupted edb email items, contacts items, task items, notes items and many other items in to pst file. for more info visit this link https://www.stelladatarecovery.com/exchange-edb-recovery.html

Larry Chadbourne said...

You can use SysInspire EDB to PST Converter software for doing free Exchange EDB recovery without doing any type of data loss. You can download this software from the official website of SysInspire to recover unlimited mailbox elements with maintaining all email properties.

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