Introduction to the Exchange 2003 Disaster Recovery Operations Guide

 

This collection of topics explains how to back up and restore the critical data in your Exchange organization. They cover how to use the backup utility in Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 (Backup), how to back up Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, and how to restore Exchange Server 2003. In addition, these topics also include information on advanced recovery strategies, such as manipulating Active Directory® directory service attributes to provision mailboxes, moving Exchange databases between servers and storage groups, and how to detect and correct problems caused by an incorrect msExchMasterAccountSid, and how to recover a whole cluster by performing a standard cluster restore, and by using a standby cluster.

It is important that you familiarize yourself with how to perform backup and restore procedures so that you can prepare for (back up) and recover from (restore) a failure that causes some or all of your data to become unavailable. These topics are intended for information technology (IT) professionals who perform backup and restore procedures or who write customized backup and restore procedures for their organization.

Note

These topics do not cover third-party backup and restore solutions. Instead, they explain how to use the backup utility (Backup) in Windows Server 2003 for both backup and recovery purposes. For information about how to use third-party software products for disaster recovery, see that software's documentation.

These topics focus on deployments of Exchange 2003 that are running on a Windows Server 2003 operating system. For information about how to back up and restore Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server deployments that are running on Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server, see Disaster Recovery for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. For information about how to back up and restore Microsoft Exchange 5.5 servers, see Microsoft Exchange 5.5 Disaster Recovery.

Recovery storage groups, which are new in Exchange 2003, are not covered in this guide. For information about recovery storage groups, see Using Recovery Storage Groups in Exchange Server 2003.

To learn more about strategies for maintaining a highly available Exchange 2003 messaging system, see the Exchange Server 2003 High Availability Guide.

Disaster recovery documentation

Guide	Material covered
Exchange Server 2003 High Availability Guide	Maintaining a high level of uptime. Meeting service level agreements.
Using Recovery Storage Groups in Exchange Server 2003	Explanation of recovery storage groups. How to use recovery storage groups to back up Exchange data. How to recover data from a database in a recovery storage group. How to use a dial tone database to recover a mailbox database without interrupting service to users.
Disaster Recovery for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server	Concepts and procedures necessary to plan and implement backup and restore processes for Exchange 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Server.
Microsoft Exchange 5.5 Disaster Recovery	Concepts and procedures necessary to plan and implement backup and restore processes for Exchange 5.5 Server.