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No Loss Recovery or Delete Existing Transaction Logs for Microsoft Exchange Restores

  • This article is for Windows only

Summary:

There are two choices for restoring Microsoft Exchange. The option that works best for you will depend on the reason that a restore needs to be performed.

Solution:

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Exchange Server Crashes

In this example, the disk drives on our Exchange server crash on Monday evening. The Exchange database has been corrupted by the drive failure and cannot be mounted.

However, the Exchange transaction logs are still intact. Our most recent backup was on Friday night.

We perform a restore from Friday night's backup and use the No Loss Restore option. CSSB restores the database to the (non-corrupted) state it was in on Friday night. At that point, Exchange begins to replay the transaction logs sequentially. This brings the Exchange server back to the state it was in before the crash, and the emails from Saturday, Sunday, and Monday will also be available.

If we had used the Delete Existing Transaction Logs restore, the Exchange server would be restored to the state it was in at the time of backup, on Friday night. All emails received after Friday's backup would be lost.

User Deletes All Emails

First, a disclaimer: CSSB does not directly support the restore of individual mailboxes. However, Exchange keeps all deleted emails and mailboxes for a fixed amount of time that can be configured by the user.

However, for the purposes of this example, we will assume that the deleted email is not recoverable with Exchange, and that it is imperative to recover this email:

The user accidentally deleted all of his email on Monday morning. The most recent backup was on Friday night.

Exchange must be restored to the state it was in on Friday - before the very important email was deleted. A restore is performed to the Original Location using the Delete Existing Transaction Logs option. The existing transaction logs are deleted, and the database is exactly as it was at the time of backup on Friday. The very important email is safe!

If we had used the No Loss Restore, Exchange would have applied the changes that happened after Friday's backup - including the deletion of the important email. The Exchange database would have returned to exactly the same state it was before the restore, and the very important email would be gone.

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