Exchange Disaster: Be Prepared

I get a lot of calls from people in the hurricane zone about what they can do to be prepared for the new season. Since it is only a couple of months away and forecasters are predicting another active year, DTI Data is getting in gear.

I just received the Exchange Newsletter from Windows It Pro and Paul Robichaux had some great insights I thought I would share with you on Exchange Disaster planning:

"1. Have a bug-out plan. If a disaster hit your business, how would
you get away from the area? How would you decide when it was time to
go? How would you tell your employees not to come to work? In fact, how
would you make the decision to shut down or relocate operations?
2. Keep communicating. How would management and employees
communicate until your email service could be reestablished? Who's in
charge of establishing and maintaining disaster communications?
3. Grab your gear and go. One of my customers implemented its
disaster recovery plan for Hurricane Katrina by shutting down the
Exchange server, pulling all the disks from the storage enclosure, and
taking them by car to Houston. This was an ingenious and effective
solution, given the circumstances. What would you do under similar
circumstances?
4. Now is always better than later. It's better to have a fair
solution now than a perfect solution later. Of course, this doesn't
mean that you should rush out and slap together a disaster-preparedness
strategy out of whatever random products and technologies you can find.
It does, however, mean that you should push disaster recovery and
preparedness planning to the forefront of your list of operational
concerns.
It's not possible to anticipate every possible disaster, but you don't
have to. The responses to many disasters will be the same; you can make
plans based on the expected duration of recovery, the impact of the
disaster on your facilities and the surrounding area, and other
factors. Even if you don't live in a disaster-prone area (I don't; the
biggest threat in northwest Ohio is apparently highway construction),
you should still be prepared for things such as structure fires, major
traffic accidents (what if a gasoline tanker blew up nearby? That
happened at my wedding!), and so on.
The Boy Scouts say "Be prepared," but I like the US Coast Guard's motto
better: "Semper Paratus," which is Latin for "always ready."

For more info on Hurricane Data Recovery Services.

DTI DATA Hurricane Disaster Recovery Relief Efforts

Exchange Disaster Recovery Action Plan

Microsoft Exchange Action Plan

Below is an actual email from a client. The inherent problem with this plan is the fact that there is no mention of te importance to back up your mdbdata folder and it really tells you to delete the log files! This is crazy. Any email activity happening from the time the priv was synched to the crash is in the logs. Many times we have to recover data out of the log files.PLEASE back up all your priv, priv1, stm, pub and LOG files prior to implementing the "action plan"

Michael,This was sent to, and is being forwarded to you via my personal email as our company server was DOWN!!!! Your discretion is appreciated. Quoting Microsoft:
Action Plan:-
1) ESEUTIL /P E:\EXCHSRVR\MDBDATA\PRIV.EDB (After you finish this command please delete all the log (EDB.LOG, EDBXXX.LOG) files from E:\EXCHSRVR\MDBDATA Folder)
2) ESEUTIL /P E:\EXCHSRVR\MDBDATA\PUB.EDB
After Finishing the above command please type the below command.
3) ESEUTIL /D E:\EXCHSRVR\MDBDATA\PRIV.EDB
4) ESEUTIL /D E:\EXCHSRVR\MDBDATA\PUB.EDB
5) Go to C:\EXCHSRVR\BIN folder and run the next command.
6) ISINTEG -PRI -FIX -TEST ALLTESTS (Run this command maximum three (3) time to get Error=0, Warning=0, Fixes=0)
7) ISINTEG -PUB -FIX -TEST ALLTESTS(Run this command maximum three (3) time to get Error=0, Warning=0, Fixes=0)

This client lost all data, hundreds of mailboxes and public contacts and calanders! We recovered the data in 2 days! How? he read our home page and backed up his databases prior to running Microsoft Utilities!

Call Michael Stankard at 727-251-2058 for 24 hour Exchange support.

Exchange Data Recovery

Using ex merge

If a mailbox store becomes corrupted, you can use the Exchange 2000 Server Mailbox
Merge (ExMerge.exe) tool to recover all uncorrupted data. If you can start the
Information Store service, you can run ExMerge.exe against the corrupted mailbox store.
ExMerge copies and transfers uncorrupted data for all users on the corrupted mailbox
store to personal folder (.pst) files. After you run ExMerge, you can reset the Information
Store service and then import the .pst files into an undamaged mailbox store.


ExMerge uses a process that helps you recover all uncorrupted data even if individual
mailbox folders contain corrupted messages. Usually, ExMerge extracts all messages in a
mailbox folder collectively to minimize remote procedure call (RPC) traffic. However, if
a particular message causes an error, ExMerge automatically skips that message and then
begins individually copying the messages that remain in the folder. While copying
messages individually does increase network traffic, it also allows the tool to bypass the
corrupted data. After ExMerge finishes copying each message individually in the mailbox
folder containing the corrupted message, the tool then resumes copying messages
collectively in other mailbox folders until another error occurs.


The ExMerge tool and its documentation are available on the Exchange 2000 compact
disc in the following folder: SUPPORT\UTILS\I386\EXMERGE.


Call our Exchange Hotline 727-251-2058 24/7 - Initial Exchange Support Call Are No Charge. You Only Pay If An Engineer Must Remote In To Solve Your Exchange Issue.

Exchange Server 5.5 Support

dtidata.com is happy to announce it is now offering free phone support for Exchange 5.5. Since Microsoft no longer supports 5.5 we have gotten in so many corrupt 5.5 edb files, that we started phone support just for 5.5.

If anyone needs more info on Exchange Server 5.5 support give me a call: 727-251-2058.

We still offer the best in RAID Data Recovery as well as data recovery software. We also have free data recovery software.

We are offering our Professional Power Pack at reduced rates. Call Michael at 727-251-2058, mention my blog and I will cut you 50% off the list price on data recovery tools. Data Recovery Software