Monday, August 19, 2013

Exchange Server Corruption, Corruption Causes and the Resolution

An email based communication server 'Microsoft Exchange Server' contains all the data of Outlook. This means, whatever you perform in Outlook is immediately synchronized with the Exchange Server.

Exchange Server uses database files ‘EDB’ to store all the Outlook information including email messages, calendars, notes and every other data item. It is obvious that EDB files are very important to keep the data safe. Unfortunately, corruption in EDB files may be caused due to malfunction, human errors, virus infection missing database objects, and improper system shutdown. The two types of corruption may occur in EDB database:

Corruption in EDB database

Logical Corruption

Logical corruption occurs due to storage corruption and failure in database engine. This type of corruption may also take place at application level, such as corruption in email messages, mailboxes, attachments and folders etc. Such corruption is generally difficult to identify.

Physical Corruption

Physical corruption occurs in case of damage the hard drive.

Causes of Exchange Server Corruption

Following are the causes that lead to corruption in EDB files:

(a) When you run the soft recovery through  eseutil /r utility after the restoration of database from online backup, it replays the log files only, ignoring the patch files. Consequently, logical corruption occurs. Moreover, ESE ( Extensible Storage Engine) 98 does not allow running the soft recovery against the database requiring hard recovery. If you try doing it, it generates the following error in Exchange Server's application event log:

“JET_errSoftRecoveryOnBackupDatabase (-544)”

(b) Initializing an inconsistent EDB file checks the presence of specified log range in the log directory. It also verifies the correctness of log signatures and database. In case it is found that the specified log range is not present, following error appears:

“JET_errRequiredLogFilesMissing (-543)”

As you saw, logical corruption generally occurs in the primary database components, such as database engine or Information Store. To identify the problem, you can try the following Exchange Server inbuilt utilities:

The Isinteg

Isinteg is an abbreviation of the Information Store Integrity Checker, which can identify the errors and problems that occur when you logon to the Exchange Server databases and attempt accessing, receiving or deleting the emails.

The Eseutil

Eseutil helps in verifying the structure of database tables and the stored records. The command fixes Information Store and directory issues.

However, using the built-in utilities does not really leave positive impact every time and you fail to know the problem and resolve it. In such situation, it is highly recommended to use commercial comprehensive Exchange Server Recovery software. It will restore email messages, attachments, notes, contacts, appointments, and rest of the EDB file contents very efficiently. Visit Tool - http://exchange.stellarservertools.com/

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