Disaster recovery for Exchange

This procedure guides you through a complete restoration of Exchange using Backup Exec. You should have already performed all the appropriate preparation.

See Preparing for disaster recovery of Exchange Server.

If the Exchange 2000 Server being recovered contains the Site Replication Service (SRS) and/or Key Management Service (KMS), then before you begin the disaster recovery, refer to your Exchange documentation for details on recovering those databases.

Always log in to Windows using the Administrator account (or an Administrator equivalent) during this procedure. Other requirements include:

You can use Intelligent Disaster Recovery to recover the Exchange server.

See About Microsoft Exchange recovery notes.

To perform disaster recovery for Exchange 2000 or later

  1. Recover the Windows server first.

    See Returning to the last known good configuration.

    Make sure you restore the Exchange Server 2000 Server or later files that existed on all disk partitions.

    When the Windows 2000 server disaster recovery procedure is complete (after the last reboot), you must recover the Exchange server.

  2. From the Services applet, verify the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is started.

  3. Start Backup Exec.

  4. Catalog the media that contains the latest backup of the Exchange 2000 Server or later storage groups you want to recover.

  5. On the navigation bar, click the arrow next to Restore.

  6. Click New Restore Job.

  7. On the Properties pane, under Source, click Selections.

  8. Select the latest full backups of each storage group for restore.

    If continuous protection is enabled, you can select the backup sets from a full backup or a recovery point.

    If the Exchange 2000 Server being recovered contains the Site Replication Service (SRS) and/or Key Management Service (KMS), then select those databases for restore as well.

  9. If necessary, select all subsequent incremental storage group backups.

    If differential backups are to be restored, only the most recent differential storage group backups need to be selected.

  10. On the Properties pane, under Settings, click Microsoft Exchange.

  11. Click the Purge existing data and restore only the databases and transaction logs from the backup sets option.

  12. In the Path on Exchange Server for temporary storage of log and patch files field, type a location where the associated log and patch files are to be kept until the database is restored.

    Make sure the temporary location for log and patch files is empty before you start a restore job. If a restore job fails, check the temporary location (including subdirectories) to make sure any previous log and patch files from a previous restore job were deleted.

  13. If your selection contains the last backup set to be restored, check Commit after restore completes.

    Do not check this if you still have backup sets to restore.

    If Commit after restore completes is checked when an intermediate backup is being applied, you cannot continue to restore backups and you must restart the restore operation from the beginning.

    After the database is restored, the log and patch files in the temporary location are applied to the database, and then the current log files are applied. After the restore is complete, the log and patch files are automatically deleted from the temporary location (including any subdirectories).

  14. If you want the databases to be immediately available to users after the recovery, check Mount database after restore.

  15. Start the restore job or select other restore options on the Properties pane.

  16. After completing the restore, it is recommended that a full backup of the restored databases be performed.