Chapter Summary

Exchange 2000 Server utilizes the features of the ESE for its database repositories. Transaction logging and other database features turn Exchange 2000 Server into an extremely reliable platform. Even if databases are lost, transaction logs can help to recover all data, including messages not saved in previous backups. With deleted items retention, it might not even be necessary to work with backups to restore accidentally deleted messages or mailboxes. Reconnecting mailboxes to user accounts can be as easy as a few mouse clicks in Exchange System Manager.

Using Exchange System Manager, you can configure system monitors and automatic notifications to keep you constantly informed about the health of your systems. If a server enters a warning or critical state (for instance, because it is running out of disk space), LSI propagates the news to all servers in the organization. A monitoring server may then send you an e-mail message or launch a script to take action.

It is generally advisable to keep sufficient disk space available on database drives for maintenance routines, such as database compaction using ESEUTIL.EXE. By default, transaction log files are not deleted automatically and may fill your drives to capacity. Use full or incremental backups to purge transaction log files. Turn on circular logging only for storage groups that contain less important data, such as newsgroups. Circular logging purges and overwrites previous transactions as soon as they have been committed to the databases, which prevents sophisticated backup and restore procedures.

It is vital to test backup media and restoration methods periodically on a reference system with sufficient disk capacity. The reference server must not be part of your production Active Directory forest. To restore databases online, the corresponding Exchange 2000 Server services must be running, but the databases must be dismounted. Restoring a database does not affect other stores. Unaffected users can continue their work. It is even possible to back up one database while restoring another. You should always include all databases of a single storage group in one backup set. Multiple storage groups may be backed up or restored using multiple sessions simultaneously. To back up Exchange 2000 Server databases, use an Exchange 2000 Server-enabled backup program, such as the extended Windows 2000 Backup utility.