ExchangeRecovery.org

Exchange Disaster Recovery after Hurricane

Hurricane Disaster Recovery Case Study

Scenario:

New Orleans accounting firm (requested anonymity) running Exchange 2000 Enterprise on a Dell Power Edge 4400 Server. EDB size 23GB aprox. 250 users.

The failure was at the RAID 5 level. The server shutdown and 2 out of 5 hard drives (78GB Seagate SCSI) failed. The Exchange server was backed up using Veritas and a Quantum tape library. The tapes were damaged by water.

The company is being temporarily housed by Regus in Houston.

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Transaction Logs as Backup

MicrosoftÂ® Exchange Server transaction logging is a robust disaster recovery mechanism that is designed to reliably restore an Exchange database to a consistent state after any sudden stop of the database. The logging mechanism is also used when restoring online backups.

Before changes are actually made to an Exchange database file, Exchange writes the changes to a transaction log file. After a change has been safely logged, it can then be written to the database file.
It is common for changes to become available to end users just after the changes have been secured to the transaction log, but before they have been written to the database file. Exchange employs a sophisticated internal memory management system that is tuned for high performance. Physically writing out changes to the database file is a low-priority task during normal operation. Exchange can efficiently manage caching of more than a gigabyte of database pages. This cache includes pages read from the database to fulfill client requests, as well as changed pages that will eventually be written back to the database file.

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Hard Drive Recovery Tips

What is data recovery?

Well there are 3 types of recovery:
Logical Data Recovery - This type of recovery involves using software to recover deleted files, virus damage or damage to the operating system.
Non-Invasive Recovery - When the electronics on a drive fry for some reason or another and the hard drive doesn't have to go into the clean room, its non-invasive.
Invasive Data Recovery - If any of the interior parts fail, usually the heads, the drive has to be opened. Hard drives have to be opened in a clean room, if even the smallest speck of dust gets into the heads the platters can be damaged.

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