Windows Server Backup | Jaap Wesselius

Last week I got a request from a customer. A long time ago I posted a blogpost on Exchange 2010 recovery databases, but after the customer migrated to Exchange 2016 his procedure around recovery databases didn’t work anymore. His request was basically to rewrite my blogpost.

For this blogpost I have a pretty simple Exchange 2016 Mailbox server, configured with one Mailbox database which is stored on a dedicated disk, and I’m using Windows Server Backup to backup the entire Mailbox database disk (VSS full backup).

Don’t pay too much attention to the naming of my Exchange server and the Mailbox database I’m using here. In fact, this is an Exchange 2016 hybrid server I’m misusing for the purpose of this blog Smile

Recovery database

You can restore a mailbox database to its original location and mount again, but you can also use a Recovery Database to restore and recover your data. A recovery database is a mailbox database that can be mounted on your Exchange server, but it is not visible for regular users but only for the Exchange administrator. The Exchange administrator can access this recovery database and recover data, for example create a PST of a particular mailbox in this database.

When restoring a database from backup, select the restore option and follow the wizard. When you reach the Select Recovery Type window select Applications as shown in the following screenshot.