Study How to Recover Failed Exchange Server 2016

In this article you will get the information related to recover failed Exchange Server 2016 by using manual as well automatic way. As you might know that many organizations depend on Microsoft Exchange Server owing to its efficient mail services and additional features. Although it aims to provide reliable services to its valuable users, sometimes the server may face some internal issues and hinder its smooth functioning. The users suffer much as the server is completely down and there occurs a situation of inaccessibility to the emails and other Exchange services. Server failure can arise in situations where the dead hardware components prevent booting the server or any corruption in operating system may lead to failure of server in virtual machine. Since, the organization or professionals cannot bear such loss, they immediately try to gather some resolution for handling the failed server. The situation can be overcome by recovery installation of Exchange Server 2016, which will eliminate the server related issues in the best manner. An automated tool, Exchange Recovery also provides an efficient and quick solution to recover the failed or damaged Exchange Server 2016.

Steps to recover Failed Exchange Server 2016 Using Recovery Installation

The recovery installation of Exchange server is one of the best action to cope with the failed or corrupted Exchange Server 2016. It provides complete recovery and restoration of the Exchange Server data files, without any database loss issue.
The recovery installation is a stepwise procedure that needs to be performed carefully by the technical user. The various phases involved in the recovery installation of Exchange Server 2016 includes:

Stage 1: Installing New Exchange Server Instance

Firstly, a healthy server needs to be maintained that is used to recover the faulty Exchange server. It can be accomplished by following procedure:

1. Install a new Windows Server operating system on the system
2. Set the same drive letters for new instance, which are being used by failed server
3. Connect the new server instance to the required domain.

Note: All the characteristics of new server instance(server name, server version, drive letters, capacity) should be same as the existing failed server.

Stage 2: Running Recovery Installation Setup

Once the new server instance has been set up manually, it needs to be loaded with the setup files of the existing failed Exchange Server. It can be performed in the following manner:

1. Copy the setup files from existing server to newly created server instance
2. In the command prompt, set the path location for setup files of new server
3. Run the following command on the command prompt
   “C:\>setup/mode:recoverserver /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms“

Stage 3: Re-applying the custom configurations

When a recovery install command is run, then it automatically re-installs major configurations stored in the Active Directory of the Exchange Server. However, it contains only server specific files such as virtual directory URL settings, transport information, database location etc. Many important information such as IIS settings, SSL certificates, registry keys are not re-installed by re-installation configuration as these contents are stored locally on the machine. So, user needs to manually configure these files on the new server instance. The SSL certificates being the most crucial component must be re-installed manually by the user. In case of multiple Exchange Server 2016 or 2013, the user can choose export and import option for the same SSL certificates.

Stage 4: Restoring the lost database Volumes

The extent of Exchange server failure may vary according to the situation. If the failure is minimal, then there is no chances of loss of the volumes containing mailbox database. So, the user can easily access the database without any issue.
It may be possible that the database and log files are sustained but are not properly mounted on the server. It can be solved by using command line ESEUtil utility, which allows to scan and recover the damaged and corrupted database and log files efficiently.

Alternate Recovery Approach

The manual method to recover failed Exchange Server 2016 is discussed above needs much efforts and time to efficiently recover exchange server data files. Moreover, it is needed to be performed under technical guidance as any faulty move may lead to permanent data loss. Users can go for an automated third party tool, Exchange Recovery, which provides complete recovery solution for every kind of Exchange Server failure within few easy steps. It also provides support to recover data from corrupted or offline EDB files. You can download the demo version of tool by clicking on below button.

 

Exchange Recovery Tool

Conclusion

Since Exchange Server may face some unexpected issues, the users are advised to maintain the backup of transaction and log files. These files can be used in case of severe server failure leading to loss of files. Both the manual method and automated approach have been discussed above to make it clear how to recover failed Exchange Server 2016.