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How to Perform a Dial Tone Recovery on an Exchange 2007 Server with a Failed Database

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Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3

This topic explains how to recover a failed database by performing a dial tone recovery on a single server running Exchange 2007. The Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 dial tone recovery feature provides a limited business continuity solution for database, server, and site loss scenarios. By creating a temporary, or dial tone, database, users can send and receive messages while their Exchange database is being recovered or restored.

Before You Begin

To perform the following procedure, the account you use must be delegated the Exchange Server Administrator role and local Administrators group for the target server. For more information about permissions, delegating roles, and the rights that are required to administer Exchange 2007, see Permission Considerations.

Procedure

The following assumptions are made in this procedure: Mailbox database 2 (MDB2) in storage group 2 (SG2) on Exchange server 1 (EX1) has failed, and you want to restore it.

To perform a dial tone recovery on an Exchange 2007 server with a failed database

  1. If there are any files that correspond to the MDB2 database, move them to a temporary location. They might be needed for further recovery operations.

  2. Mount an empty MDB2 database on the Exchange 2007 server EX1 by mounting the MDB2 database. You will be warned that you are about to create an empty database. This warning is expected, and you should proceed. For more information about mounting Exchange databases, see How to Mount a Database.

    Note

    Because you are mounting a dial tone database on the same server in the same storage group that the database was originally mounted in, there is no need to use the Move-Mailbox -ConfigurationOnly command to move the mailbox configurations.

  3. Use the Database Recovery Management tool in the Toolbox in the Exchange Management Console to configure the recovery storage group on EX1 for MDB2 in SG2.

  4. Using your backup software, restore the backup of MDB2 to your recovery storage group. Before mounting the recovery database to the recovery storage group, copy any log files from the failed database to the recovery storage group so that they can be played against the restored database.

  5. Using the Database Recovery Management tool, swap the recovery storage group and dial tone database that you created in Step 2.

    Note

    Swapping the databases makes the restored database the active database that users connect to and places the dial tone database in the recovery storage group.

    Note

    Swapping the databases results in downtime for all users accessing the dial tone database while the swap is taking place.

  6. Using the Database Recovery Management tool, merge content from the dial tone database created in Step 2 with the now active recovered database.

    Note

    Merging the databases gives users access to messages that were placed in the dial tone database while it was in production. The merge process extracts messages from the dial tone database and places them in the recovered database.

  7. Using the Database Recovery Management tool, you can remove the recovery storage group. Or, you can manually remove the recovery storage group using the Exchange Management Shell. For more information about removing recovery storage groups, see How to Remove a Recovery Storage Group.

    Note

    The Database Recovery Management tool does not remove the database and log files associated with the recovery storage group. You must manually remove those files if that is required.

    Note

    The recovered database is now pointing to the path of the recovery storage group. The database path location must be moved if you want the original path location. For more information about how to move the database path, see the topic How to Move a Storage Group Path.

For More Information

For more information about managing databases, see Managing Storage Groups and Databases.

For more information about how to create a new storage group, see How to Create a New Storage Group.

For more information about performing dial tone recoveries, see Dial Tone Recovery.