SiDHEaD

Our private information store decided to become corrupt last night. eseutil wouldn't work with it as it kept saying problem with the header. So I'm currently in the middle of a restore on the information store to go back to monday night's backup.

I have copied off yesterday's transaction logs, what is the best way to get these into the restored db? I've got some help page from technet but its all a bit fiddly, anything to make it easier???


Andy

ozzy

Which version of Exchange? Do you use circular logging?

Did you run the ISINTEG utility on the database?

When you perform a roll-forward restore, you restore the IS and leave the transaction logs where they are. You need to delete the checkpoint file.

The logs should be automatically replayed into the database when it starts the services.

Stefan

SiDHEaD

It's 5.5. Got a copy restored from DLT now. Just waiting for a copy of that to be copied off incase we need it.

Circular logging appears to be off according to the admin console. I think I ran isinteg on the nackered edb earlier to no avail, been a long day and only 2hrs sleep!

I have the transaction logs for yesterday (since the backup of this restored IS), do i just delete the check point and wop them in to the directory?

ozzy

Yes (well move the checkpoint file just in case), but it's been years since I've done it. I've been meaning to do a test recovery on our new setup for months, but never got round to it.

Transaction Logs are all the mail since the last full backup, so restore IS and copy files back to original location. Starting the services should load the IS database and then re-write the changes from the logs back into the database. They'll not clear down until you do another full backup.

BTW if circular logging was enabled, then you'd lose the point-of-failure recovery in Exchange.

Stefan

SiDHEaD

Seems to have worked Backup in progress!

ozzy

..... I'm not surprised ..... honest

Stefan

SiDHEaD

Well that seems tohave worked fine as the original problem is back. Database full. Its Exchange Standard so has the 16gb limit, which we've hit.. Tool i ran on it last nite corrupted the priv.edb. Luckily its all back to where we were before i ran that. Although server still doesn't stay running as IS closes when it notices its full. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

sti555

seem to have done loads of these lately exchange 5.5 and 2000, felt like every server I touched for a week blue screened!,so if you need advice fire me an email over..

look on technet ESEUTIL once you have restored from backup, make a copy of the restored edb in case you mess up, saves time and hassle, normally quite easy tbh... get the users to tidy the mailbox's then defrag you will be suprised how much smaller it becomes, be warned its very time consuming repairing, lots of waiting about!

Cheers
Tim

SiDHEaD

All sorted The offline defrag worked without corrupting the database file this time

Thanks for your help guys!

ozzy

I honestly can't see any reason for M$ keeping the 16GB limit. It even exists on std Exchange 2003. I can see the point in restrictions between std and Enterprise, but on the database size is just crazy.

I've just upgraded our servers to Enterprise simply to get over this restriction. We have to keep records of all e-mail from project work and I refuse to archive them to PST. WTF is the point in spending 000's on new servers to have them with a tiny 16GB database and loads of PST's

Anyway, that's my rant over - get a grip M$ !!

SiDHEaD

Ah so we'll still potentially have a problem when we move to 2003. We've still currently got NT4.0 and Exch5.5 cos our phone system's voicemail has become unsupported and may not be compatible. New phone systems are currently being looked at however

Have sent out an email telling everyone to delete old voicemails etc (usually about 300-500k each) and this has brought the size down a bit. I was as much to blame as in my BackupExec account the sent items was 1.2gb, all those damn backup logs!