Chapter 32. Recovering from a Disaster

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Identifying the Extent of the Problem

• What to Do Before Performing Any Server-Recovery Process

• Preparing for a More Easily Recoverable Environment

• Recovering from a Site Failure

• Recovering from a Disk Failure

• Recovering from a Boot Failure

• Recovering from a Complete Server Failure

• Recovering Exchange Application and Exchange Data

• Recovering from Database Corruption

• Using the Recovery Storage Group in Exchange Server 2003

• Recovering Internet Information Services

• Recovering the Cluster Service

• Recovering Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers

• Recovering Active Directory

• Best Practices

When an Exchange server or environment isn't working properly, possibly due to database corruption, hardware failure, or just unknown reasons, there's an urgent need to get the Exchange system back up and running as quickly as possible. Several approaches can be used to recover from a disaster of a failed server. One approach is to follow the procedures recommended in Chapter 30, "System-Level Fault Tolerance (Clustering/Network Load Balancing)," and Chapter 31, "Backing Up the Exchange Server 2003 Environment," and then following the recovery procedures of a properly backed -up environment. However, in reality, most organizations do not proactively create an environment with disaster-recovery processes in place. This chapter has several recommendations on how to recover from a disaster, ranging from recovery from a proactively backed-up environment to an environment that has not been actively prepared for simple recovery. The recovery processes include a tape restore and procedures to repair and recover data from corrupt databases.