2004-06-20

Repairing Exchange databases with ESEUTIL - when and how?

[Via Bink.nu RSS] Here's a nightmare scenario for an Exchange administrator: The disk system where your Exchange databases live goes insane and damages the database. No big deal, you think, I'll just restore it from backup and roll forward with the transaction logs. No data loss, although it will cost some downtime. Then you find that somebody put a 2 liter bottle of soda on top of the backup tapes. A bottle with a leaky seam. Not all things go better with Coke! Your Exchange database is unstartable and your backups are bad. What do you do next? Exchange includes two very sophisticated utilities that will come to your rescue: Eseutil and Isinteg. If there is salvageable data in your injured database, they'll stitch it back together for you. In actual practice, these two utilities are remarkably successful in fixing up a database (almost) like brand new. In fact, they may be a little too successful. I've seen too many administrators who've gotten careless with their backups because they know they can count on the repair tools to (almost) always save their bacon. That parenthetical (almost) is why you can't rely on repairing a database as your primary method of data recovery. Nothing beats having an extra copy of your data safely off in a second location (like on a backup tape). And repair can only repair what's still there. Massive damage to the existing database or complete loss of the drives is an all too frequent occurrence, even with today's redundant disk hardware. Read at source how to repair an Exchange database that won't start News Source: Ehlo blog