How to Manually Restore Exchange 2010 Database using PowerShell Commands

Restoring Exchange Database is an optimal solution in disaster situation to continue the mail flow inside and outside the organization. But most of time exchange administrator go for backup to overcome from disaster. Taking backup and restoring exchange mailbox is quite hectic task and this process takes too much time to stablish mail flow. So in this blog I am giving you manual way to recover exchange 2010 database which helps in configuring mail flow.

Here I am giving you some PowerShell command which you can use to repair and restore exchange 2010 database. Microsoft provides many PowerShell command which can be used to perform various task.

Some actions that you need to perform before starting restoration process to exchange 2010 database. Those actions are given bellow:

• Login as an Exchange Administrator.
• Create a copy of corrupted or healthy EDB file in backup folder.
• Dismount the complete exchange database data from the Microsoft Exchange Server.
• Move useless files and free the space on floppy disk.
• Use check disk space (CHDSK) tool to verify the required space on disk.

To Restore Exchange 2010 database you need to use Eseutil and Isinteg, both the commands are usable only on offline exchange database. So you need to dismount the exchange 2010 database from the Microsoft Exchange Server.

Steps to Restore Exchange 2010 Database:

We have two PowerShell utility to restore exchange database, soft recovery /r and hard recovery /p. it is recommended that run the Isinteg before starting restoration process and after completion of restoration process as well because it maintains the logical and physical indexing.

Step 1: - check the state of exchange database is clean or dirty use /mh switch of Eseutil utility.
                  Eseutil /mh "path of database"

It returns with two results either health of database is clean or dirty.

Step 2: - If the database state is clean then move log files from transaction log folder and mount the database.

Step 3: - If database state is dirty then perform the Soft recovery command /r. use the command given bellow:
                   Eseutil /r /l "Path of the Log file" /d "Path of the Database"

Note: - If the log files are missing then you need to restore from updated backup and then perform hard recovery.

Step 4: - perform the hard recovery using Eseutil/p command given bellow.
                  Eseutil /p "Path of EDB file"

Once the Eseutil /p is used you need to run the Isinteg to defragment the disk space.

Conclusion:
In this blog I tried to explore the manual way to restore exchange 2010 database by using Eseutil utility. But this manual method is very hectic to use, while searching on internet I found an alternate Exchange Recovery tool that I have used several times and able to restore exchange database easily.