When it comes to recovering from disaster in the Exchange Server environment, you should have a well-defined process/strategy in place. In this guide, we will look into the strategies or best practices that you can follow for successful Exchange Server recovery in case of a failure or disaster. We will also see how to recover data from corrupted databases, if the servers fail, with the minimal effort and no data loss.
Strategies and Best Practices for Exchange Server Recovery
Here, we will be mentioning some strategies and best practices that can help you in Exchange Server recovery and restoring the services in minimum time, in case of disaster or any other issue.
Understand the Needs and Implement the Exchange Server Setup
Before you should go into the implementation of the Exchange Server infrastructure, you need to understand the business needs and future requirements. You should also understand the structure and the data to make sure that you would be in a good position to restore the data in the least possible time, if something happens.
You can setup the Database Availability Groups (DAG) to have high availability. In this setup, you would have multiple servers/nodes and data resilience, since the databases will be replicated between all the nodes. In case of failure, the Exchange Server can switch to another node without impacting the operations.
Manage the Databases
You can easily put all the mailboxes into one database. However, to prevent storage and performance issues, and corruption of data, it is suggested to split the data into separate databases. The Exchange Server Standard edition allows up to five databases while the Enterprise edition allows unlimited number of databases. You should split the data in such a way that if one database fails, then it will not affect all the mailboxes in the system.
Take Databases and Server Backup
Taking a backup of the data and server is an important process to ensure that the system is cleaned up. When a full backup is taken, the transaction logs are committed to the database and automatically purged from the system. If this is not done, the transaction logs will never get purged and would cause storage issues, potentially corrupting the database.
There are different types of backups, such as:
- Full Backup: In this, a snapshot of the entire server, including the data and operating system, is taken. If a full backup is always taken, this will consume a lot of storage and take a considerate amount of time to complete
- Incremental Backup: In this, a full backup is taken for the first time and then the consequent backups of the changes from the previous backup. This will take much less time. But you should secure both the full backup and the backups afterwards, since all the backups depend on each other. If a backup is corrupted, then you will not be able to restore and have to revert to an even older backup
- Differential Backup: This backup works the same way as the incremental backup, but each incremental backup depends only on the full backup. This will give more data protection but if something happens to the full backup, you will not be able to restore. This is safer than the incremental but it will take more time to finish
Decide Backup Strategy
You should always discuss the backup strategy with the company to comply with regulatory compliance and business needs. Also, you should consult with the vendor or supplier to ensure that the backup solution is application-aware and compatible with the Exchange Server version.
In addition, you should have a media strategy for backups. It is suggested to have a local backup on another storage, which would have daily backups during the day. This will ensure easy and quick recovery. Additionally, you should have an offsite backup of the server on tapes, Network Attached Storage (NAS), or cloud storage on daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. This will ensure that if anything happens, data can be recovered.
Implement Monitoring System
Although your system is backed up, you should also implement a monitoring system. A monitoring system would monitor the server’s performance, event logs, storage, and underlying hardware, and will report any errors or anomalies directly to the respective teams. This helps to take immediate action before any damage is done.
Test and Document Recovery Procedures
Taking the backups alone is not enough. Checking the backups on a daily basis or a monthly restore test is essential. A restore test doesn’t need to be of a full server. You can restore random files or emails to ensure that the backup can be restored, if needed.
In addition, a full disaster recovery procedure must be performed, ideally on a yearly basis. This process must be documented in case there would be a need to restore the server from scratch. This should include information related to the software, processes, people involved, and all the steps to restore.
Keep Specialized Exchange Recovery Tools in Hand
When disaster occurs, you need to ensure that the data will be fully recovered and server will be operational again in the minimum amount of time. A server can be re-installed with the Setup.exe /mode:RecoverServer but recovering the data is a major element in successfully recovery. You can always restore from backup, but this will mean that there is some data loss. You can use the EseUtil command to try to put the database back into a healthy state, but this could lead to further damage and longer downtime.
So, you should also include specialized Exchange server recovery tool in the disaster recovery plan document. Stellar Repair for Exchange is one such tool that allows you to open multiple databases of any size and any version of Exchange Server, even if the server is not running. After a quick/deep scan, you will be able to granularly export mailboxes, archives, shared mailboxes, public folders, and disabled mailboxes, to PST and other file formats. You can also export directly to a live Exchange Server database or Office 365 tenant with features, such as automatic mailbox matching, parallel exports, and priority exports.
Conclusion
There are a number of components to ensure recovery of Exchange Server setup with minimal downtime and minimal data loss. Of course, you need to secure and protect the setup against the disasters, like malicious/ransomware attacks, natural disasters, hardware/software failure, or human errors. You can follow the above-mentioned best practices that can help in Exchange Server recovery when a disaster occurs. You must ensure that backups are in place and tested, and also have right Exchange recovery tools in hand to minimize the impact when needed.