Exchange 2016: Backup and restore with Windows Server Backup (Part 2)

The second article in this series is about restoring a mailbox from the data backup that was created in Part 1 with the Windows Server backup was created.

The procedure is the same for many backup tools and essentially consists of writing the mailbox database back to a restore database and restoring the required data from it. The procedure described here also works with many other backup tools.

Create recovery database

A recovery database must be created so that data can be restored. Some backup tools create the recovery database automatically during the recovery process. However, many tools leave this to the administrator.

The following command creates a new recovery database:

New-MailboxDatabase -Recovery -Name RecoveryDB -Server FWCOMEX1 -EdbFilePath "D:\Databases\RecoveryDB\RecoveryDB.EDB" -LogFolderPath "D:\Databases\RecoveryDB"

Important note: When sizing an Exchange server, sufficient storage space for a recovery database should always be taken into account. If, for example, a 500 GB mailbox database needs to be restored in order to restore individual small mailboxes from it, then the corresponding storage space should be available. If capacities have to be expanded first, this will only delay the recovery process.

The information memory is not restarted in this case.

Restoring the backed up database

Once the restore database has been created, the restore process can begin. The restore process of the database naturally differs depending on the backup tool.

I created a backup with Windows Server backup in the first part:

First, the location of the fuse is specified:

In the following dialog, you can select the backup to be restored:

The Windows Server backup can also restore the Exchange databases directly. However, as this article is intended to explain the recovery using a recovery database and not the complete mailbox database, but only one mailbox is to be restored from the backup, "Files and folders" is selected instead of "Applications":

The mailbox database in which the mailbox to be restored is located can now be selected. In this case, only the database file is restored; the latest backup status can be restored by also restoring the transaction logs (Exxxxxxxxxx.log):

The restore now takes place in the folder that was specified when the recovery database was created. In this case it is "D:\Databases\RecoveryDB":

In the next step, press the summary button and wait until the recovery is complete

Putting the recovery database online

After restoring the backup, the database file has the original name and must therefore be renamed. When the recovery database was created, the name "RecoverDB.edb" was specified as the database file name. The restored database under D:\Databases\RecoveryDB is therefore renamed to ReoveryDB.edb:

After renaming, it will look like this:

However, the recovery database cannot yet be switched online as it is in the dirty shutdown state. The following command can be used to check the status of the database:

eseutil /mh 'D:\Databases\RecoveryDB\RecoveryDB.edb'

I have restored the mailbox database without the log files and therefore put the database back into the clean shutdown state with the following command so that the database can be mounted:

eseutil /p 'D:\Databases\RecoveryDB\RecoveryDB.edb'

Depending on the size of the database, this process can take quite a while:

After the process has run through, the database is in the clean shutdown state:

Note: The most up-to-date data from the backup is obtained if the transaction logs are also restored from the backup. If the transaction logs (Exxxxxxxxxx.log) are restored in addition to the EDB file, the logs must be imported into the database. This is done with the following command (instead of eseutil /p):

eseutil /r E00 /l 'D:\Databases\RecoveryDB' /d 'D:\Databases\RecoveryDB'

Once the recovery database is in the clean shutdown state, the database can be switched online:

Mount-Database RecoveryDB
Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus RecoveryDB

Restore mailbox

After the recovery database has been switched online, the contents of the recovery database can be checked with the following command. For example, to verify that the corresponding mailbox is also contained in the recovery database:

Get-MailboxStatistics -Database RecoveryDB | ft -AutoSize

The following command can now be used to restore a mailbox; the user's current mailbox is replaced by the backup replaced:

New-MailboxRestoreRequest -Name "Administrator" -SourceDatabase RecoveryDB -SourceStoreMailbox "Administrator" -TargetMailbox "Administrator"

The following command can be used to determine the status of the recovery:

Get-MailboxRestoreRequest

Note: In this case, the Administrator user's mailbox is overwritten with the mailbox from the backup. Further restore options will follow in the next article.