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Create a recovery database

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Applies to: Exchange Server 2013

You can use the Shell to create a recovery database, a special kind of mailbox database that's used to mount and extract data from the restored database as part of a recovery operation. After you create a recovery database, you can move a recovered or restored mailbox database into the recovery database, and then use the New-MailboxRestoreRequest cmdlet to extract data from the recovered database. After extraction, the data can then be exported to a folder or merged into an existing mailbox. Using recovery databases, you can recover data from a backup or copy of a database without disrupting user access to current data.

Looking for other management tasks related to recovery databases? Check out Recovery databases.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete this task: 1 minute

  • You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Mailbox recovery" entry in the Recipients Permissions topic.

  • For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts in the Exchange admin center.

Tip

Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at Exchange Server.

Use the Shell to create a recovery database

This example creates the recovery database RDB1 on the Mailbox server MBX2.

New-MailboxDatabase -Recovery -Name RDB1 -Server MBX2

This example creates the recovery database RDB2 on the Mailbox server MBX1 using a custom path for the database file and log folder.

New-MailboxDatabase -Recovery -Name RDB2 -Server MBX1 -EdbFilePath "C:\Recovery\RDB2\RDB2.EDB" -LogFolderPath "C:\Recovery\RDB2"

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-MailboxDatabase.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you've successfully created a recovery database, do the following:

  • In the Shell, run the following command to display configuration information for the recovery database.

    Get-MailboxDatabase <RecoveryDatabaseName> | Format-List

Other Tasks

After you create a recovery database, you may also want to restore data using a recovery database. For detailed steps, see Restore data using a recovery database.