Exchange 2010 - Mail Database Recovery after Database Portability Applied

• Question

• 

  

  0

  Sign in to vote

  Background:

  We had a city-wide power failure  at Office A and as a result Exchange Server A (ES-A) was taken offline for an extended period of time.  The last good backup of ES-A-DB was from the previous business day.  The DR plan was enacted and the ES-A mailbox database (ES-A-DB) was recovered to Exchange Server B (ES-B) as ES-B-DB2.  Keeping in mind that a days worth of emails still reside on ES-A-DB.

  Process:

  I employed the database portability method when restoring the ES-A-DB to ES-B-DB2 at Office B.  I rehomed the exchange users in active directory to now use ES-A-DB2.  Users are working fine, activesync worked without issue.  All is well.

  I now face the situation where power has been restored to Office A and the server is available.  I have NOT turned this server on yet as I am not sure what the net affect will be on ES-A and ES-A-DB.

  The primary goal of the business is to recover the mail items from the missing day that was not backed up and recovered to ES-B-DB2.  What would be the best way to do achieve this objective?  

  This is what I am thinking, though its all theoretical since I've never been in this situation.

  - boot the Exchange Server with the network card disconnected

  - Dismount ES-A-DB from ES-A

  - Remove ES-A-DB from Exchange Org on ES-B

  - Process logs and put the ES-A-DB in a Clean state

  - mount as recovery database

  - copy differential mail items to ES-B-DB2 mailboxes

  Anyone have insight on this?

  Thanks for your help in advance.

  Thursday, October 16, 2014 8:49 PM