Maintaining Exchange Server in full health is a challenge to Exchange administrators, especially when you have an old Exchange version like Exchange 2010. Unfortunately, a variety of hardware and software threats create hurdles every time. Whenever there is a dirty shutdown situation, the transaction log file is either deleted or becomes corrupt. That’s why the database fails to mount, and administrators cannot mount it back with any manual techniques easily.
The error which you will see when you fail to mount the database is the following –
Error: Exchange is unable to mount the database that you specified. Specified database: ServerName\First Storage Group\Exchange Database; Error Code: MapiExceptionCallFailed: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x80004005, ec=-528).
The manual approach of mounting the database back to Exchange involves repairing it with the help of the ESEUTIL tool. It is an inbuilt tool of Exchange that runs on a command-line environment and uses various switches to perform different operations.
You can see ESEUTIL at its default location:
The ESEUTIL switches check the health of the database and modify or repair it as per the need. Here is its list –
- /D – It performs the defragmentation of the database and reduces the size of the database by removing the space. It also rebuilds the index.
- /P – It performs the soft recovery of the database but skips the part of the database it cannot repair.
- /C – It performs a hard recovery of the database.
- /R – It restores the database by replaying the transaction log files bringing the database to a consistent state.
- /G – It checks database integrity at the page level.
- /M – It accesses the information related to the log files and presents headers of the database file, transaction file, and checkpoint file.
- /K – It checks and verifies the checksum of database and transaction log files.
- /Y – It copies the large database file and manages them efficiently.
Now, you can go for the recovery by following the below steps –
- Check the consistency of the database.
Eseutil /mh ‘ExchangeDatabase.edb’
The command will return the information about the database, and if the state option shows a dirty shutdown, you need to run the repair command.
- Run the soft repair
Eseutil/r ‘ExchangeDatabase.edb’
The soft repair will work fine until only the log files are missing, but if the corruption is severe, it will not work fine, and you have to go for the hard recovery.
- Run the hard repair
Eseutil /p ‘ExchangeDatabase.edb’
The hard repair will remove the corrupt data from the database and allows only the healthy item to stay. But, Exchange experts advise not to go for a hard recovery option because you will lose precious data.
After running the hard recovery, rerun the first command and check the status of the database. If it shows the clean shutdown status, then mount the database back to the Exchange.
Mount-MailboxDatabase -Identity ‘DatabaseName’
Limitations of the ESEUTIL Tool
- ESEUTIL can deal with minor Exchange database issues only
- ESEUTIL deletes the corrupt data; it can delete some data important to your business also.
- You need to make much space to run the ESEUTIL tool; if the size of the database is large, then it will create further issues.
- You need to run ESEUTIL tool multiple times and then use the ISINTEG tool.
- As you need to run the ESEUTIL tool multiple times, so the recovery procedure takes much time.
- Only a seasoned Exchange administrator can efficiently use the ESEUTIL tool and recover the data completely.
- Eseutil doesn’t offer any additional functionalities
If you do not want to face any threat to your data while recovering it, you can use Exchange Server Recovery software. It can access the dismounted database and recover the data to a production Exchange Server. It is an essential tool for all Exchange/Office 365 administrators.
Exchange Server Recovery software
Exchange Server Recovery software is a recovery software that is specially designed for Microsoft Exchange Server. It allows the recovery of the corrupt and deleted folder in Exchange 2010. The Exchange server recovery tool supports each version, including the latest Exchange Server 2019. It does not require log files to recover the corrupt databases. And after recovery, you can directly save the data to a live Exchange. In addition to recovery, it can perform small-scale migrations between Exchange Server, Office 365, etc.
