There are a number of things that can hinder the integrity and health of Exchange database, corrupt the transaction logs and the database itself, thus rendering the data inaccessible and putting the business to a halt. In this article, we will be discussing some best practices for Exchange database corruption prevention. We will also be talking about alternative Exchange recovery tools that can reduce the impact and time of downtime, if in case the database gets corrupted or any other issue arises.
Best Practices for Exchange Database Corruption Prevention
Below are some common strategies or solutions you can use to reduce the risk of database corruption.
Implement Monitoring System
This is a crucial part of maintenance of the system as it helps to know when a problem is started and tackling it before any more serious damage will be done. The monitoring system is not just to check if the server is up or not but also to inspect the event viewer, Exchange server log along with the uptime, CPU, memory, and storage in order to spot any anomaly in the system. It will try to capture trends with active monitoring to ensure minimal downtime by informing the administrators immediately when something is spotted. Having a good monitoring system will reduce the impact when an issue arises.
Choose the Right Backup Strategy and Solution
Transaction Logs act as buffer to the database and contain live data. When the Exchange Server database is backed up, the system will automatically purge the transaction logs. Failure to run a backup will result in the storage getting overflooded with these logs and possibly halt the Exchange Server. This could end up corrupting the transaction logs or the database itself. For this reason, you must check the backups on a daily basis and monitor the transaction logs. Also, the backup strategy must be selected depending on the load and business needs, which would include the following options.
- Incremental backup
- Differential backup
- Full backup
The choice of backup software takes precedence in this matter as you must ensure that the software is compatible with the operating system version and the Exchange Server version. If an unsupported backup solution is used, then it would lock and damage the data.
Robust Power Protection
If the Exchange Server suffers a power cut, the database will not have time to shut down properly. This can lead to corruption in database or transaction logs. You should have redundant power supplies on the server, along with Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) system. This will ensure enough time for the system to shut down properly or by software in-built with the UPS itself. If one of the power supplies on the server is powered directly to the source and the other with the UPS, it will prevent accidental power loss.
Services and Data Resilience
Depending on the business needs and budget, you can move away from standalone server and opt for a resilient system with High Available (HA) infrastructure. The underlying hardware should be fault tolerant to ensure that if something happens, the Exchange Server operation is not affected. This can be done using virtualization and clustering.
The other thing you can have is the Database Availability Groups (DAG) setup, where the services will automatically failover to other nodes in the cluster in case of a server failure. The databases will automatically be replicated between the nodes so that if something happens, the offline copies of the databases come online automatically. However, you also need to monitor the setup and the connection between the servers to ensure that the data flows with no issues.
What to do if Exchange Database gets Corrupted?
Although you can setup a resilient system, you cannot prevent the inevitable. An Exchange Server database becomes unmountable or corrupted due to power loss, hardware failure, issues with updates, software failure, human errors, and other reasons. In this situation, Exchange recovery software such as Stellar Repair for Exchange can assist when the native tools and other troubleshooting options fail.
This tool can open multiple databases of any size and of any Exchange Server version, without having a running Exchange Server. After a quick or deep scan, you will be presented with the full structure of the database. You can browse through the databases and granularly export the data to PST and other formats. You can export user mailboxes, user archives, shared mailboxes, disabled mailboxes, and public folders to a live Exchange Server database or even to Exchange Online with automatic mailbox matching, parallel, and priority exports. This will ensure a quick recovery in case of a disaster.
Conclusion
Above, we have seen some best practices that can help to protect and ensure the health of Exchange Server infrastructure. But when disaster strikes, recovery can be very tedious especially when you need to recover the services and data with the least possible time and with minimal resources and effort. A server can be easily rebuilt using the recover mode, but the data is the most important aspect when it comes to operations. Exchange recovery tools such as Stellar Repair for Exchange can be used to have a smoother recovery process without going through the full restore from backup which would result in data loss.
