Exchange 2010 - Recovery Scenario #2 - Recover from a DAG member loss

In this scenario, I have a 3 three server DAG, and I use Windows Server backup to backup my Exchange 2010 Active database. On the server with the active copy, I hit the virtual power button. The Exchange services fail over to another server in the DAG right away.

The Microsoft documentation:

Recover a DAG member Exchange Server

Remove the copy of the Database in a DAG:

This will warn that it cannot communicate with the server. That is expected.

Then, you can remove the server from the DAG:

Reinstall Windows 2008 R2 from DVD (remember, DAG requires Enterprise!)

Reset computer account in Domain (Right click Reset in AD Users and Computers)

Name and IP the server, confirm the date/time is correct (since in a DAG, I also needed to IP my DAG network)

Install Exchange Pre-Requisites

Install Exchange 2010 using:

setup /m:recoverserver

If you skipped the DAG removal steps above, setup will fail with:

Once setup succeeds, you need to reboot the server (at this point, I would also patch as needed - at the time of this writing 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 RC have no additional patches)

Since I have a DAG, I am able to re-add it to the database availability group and allow the database to reseed. If you were in a single server environment, this is where your backup would come into play. This might be scenario #3

Add the recovered server back to the DAG


Add a mailbox database copy to the recovered server.

Assuming you have a real DAG and you might have 300GB of data to re-seed by adding a copy, this is where the Windows Server Backup may play part. You may be able to restore the Exchange data to an alternate location, and before you add the database copy, move the restored EDB to the folder path for the database. This would allow you to skip time consuming reseeding, as long as your restored EDB was the most recent backup taken of the database.

Optionally, you can activate the database on the recovered server as well.

Exchange 2010 - Recovery Scenario #1 - Mailbox or items

In this post I wrote about how you can now backup Exchange 2007 SP2 and Exchange 2010 mailbox databases with Windows Server backup.

Since them, word of Exchange 2010's release has come, and with that, the question of "when will my backup vendor provide updates that are compatible with Exchange 2010" and "what can I do in the meantime"

One of the easiest solutions is using Windows Server backup, and then allow your existing backups to do file level backups of that data. The question once this is in place, of course is how do I recover from that?

So I intend to cover three scenarios:

1. Single Item or Mailbox recovery - accidental delete, assuming you passed or misconfigured deleted item and deleted mailbox retention.
   
2. Loss of a DAG member - How to recover from losing a single member of a DAG.
   
3. Entire Server recovery - Building/site failure, need to return to service and restore data from backups. (this will be single server from backup)

Additionally, I am using a database that is in a DAG for this, but am writing it as if it was standalone, as the #2 and #3 scenarios would be addressed by the Database Availability Group.

So, on to scenario #1 - I have disabled my mailbox in the EMC, and run the below powershell to force the database clean:

Clean-MailboxDatabase geodb1

Now I see my mailbox under "Disconnected Mailbox" in a normal scenario, this is what Exchange 2003 and up has offered, where I could right click my mailbox and choose to re-connect it to my user account:

Of course, I want to go to backups so I reset my database to have a 0 day deleted item mailbox retention and refreshed this screen and my mailbox was no more!

Do note, the settings in the above screenshot are NOT recommended. Default is 30 days, and I recommend leaving it there or higher!

Next, we must recover the data "to an alternate location" using Windows Server Backup
Choose your Backup Date, then your recovery type should be "Applications"

Choose Exchange:

(I included the show details, which is the store GUID)

I chose here to recover to another location (Note: c:\RDB1 is NOT where my RDB's EDB/logs/anything are)

Do note that "this option will copy just the application data" - there are additional steps after this!

Finally, launch the recovery.

Once completed, you will have the file structure of the database in the path specified:

Now that we have our data files, the recovery is similar to Exchange 2007 SCR's database portability.

Run ESEUTIL /R from the log file directory

Then we can run:
Eseutil /mh geodb1.edb

And determine the DB is healthy:

Next few steps edited on 11/3/2009 for missing content:

Now we can create our new Recovery mailbox database using:
new-MailboxDatabase -Recovery -Name rdb1 -Server exch2010 -EDBFilePath "c:\rdb1\rdb1.edb" -LogFolderPath "c:\rdb1\"

Then we need to allow Restores:
Set-MailboxDatabase -AllowFileRestore:True

Copy the EDB file to the path EDBFilePath of the RDB1 Database, renamed it appropriately, and then it should mount successfully (NOTE: Logs didn't need to be copied since ESEUTIL /R replayed them into the EDB, however if you do copy them into place, Exchange will see they are replayed and move on)

Once mounted, we can use

get-MailboxStatistics -database rdb1

to see that the data is there:>

Now, in the Exchange documentation, it states that:

Restore-Mailbox -Identity chris -RecoveryDatabase rdb1

would recover the data into the mailbox. The problem is, we don't have a mailbox with that GUID any more. If I re-enable a new mailbox for chris, he will get a new mailbox GUID.

Enable-Mailbox chris
Restore-Mailbox chris -RecoveryDatabase rdb1

I get:

This makes sense, it cannot match GUID's and stops - more on this in a second.

However, you are able to run a recovery operation (similar to Export-Mailbox in Exchange 2007)

Restore-Mailbox -RecoveryMailbox chris -Identity chris -RecoveryDatabase rdb1 -TargetFolder "Recovery"

And the results, all of the content in a subfolder named "Recovery"

I attempted a few other things to see if I could restore directly into the mailbox, but was not able to find any luck.

Important to note - if I was recovering for a user that missed their deleted item retention time, I can use the restore-mailbox to specify by subject, dates, folders and more. Because I mail disabled the user, I am not able to restore directly.