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Recovering mailbox databases from Exchange 2016 can be very challenging if you don’t have backups or copies of the mailbox database. Usually, every user is not capable of restoring a mailbox database in Exchange 2016 as it requires in-depth knowledge of Exchange features and retention policies. However, Microsoft offers a reliable facility to recover mailboxes from Exchange 2016 – Recovery Database.
Recovery Database (RDB) is a unique database that enables users to mount the restored mailbox database and extract data from it as a part of a recovery operation. With RDB, you can recover mailboxes from a backup or a copy of the database without interrupting user access to the data.
To extract data from the recovery database, you’ll have to use New-MailboxRestoreRequest cmdlet. After retrieving the data, you can restore it to the existing mailbox or a new folder.
Before starting the Exchange 2016 mailbox recovery with RDB, there are some things that you need to know:
After knowing these things, you can use Exchange Management Shell to recover the data using Recovery Database.
Follow the below steps to recover data using Recovery Database:
Eseutil /R Exx /l <RDBLogFilePath> /d <RDBEdbFolder>
New-MailboxDatabase -Recovery -Name <RDBName> -Server <ServerName> -EdbFilePath <RDBPathandFileName> -LogFolderPath <LogFilePath>
Restart-Service MSExchangeIS
Mount-database <RDBName>
Get-MailboxStatistics -Database <RDBName> | Format-Table -auto
New-MailboxRestoreRequest -SourceDatabase -<Database Name> -SourceStoreMailbox -<MaiboxGUID> -TargetMailbox -<MailboxName>
Using this technique, you can restore the database of Exchange 2016. But, the steps involved in this manual process are very complicated. First, you’ll have to create an RDB, restore the database to it, and then use a cmdlet to extract data from it.
Also, there is no guarantee that this process will work to restore the Exchange 2016 mailboxes. So, what is the exact and effective solution to recover Exchange 2016 mailboxes?
It is recognized as one of the most amazing tools to recover mailboxes of Exchange 2016. This tool allows users to convert EDB to PST file and migrate Exchange data to multiple platforms, such as Office 365 and Live Exchange. Also, the advanced features enable users to restore and migrate specific data from Exchange Server based on item type, date, exclude folder, etc.
The EDB file can be found on your machine where you’ve installed Exchange 2016. This file holds all the data of your Exchange, including the permanently deleted mailboxes and items. Now, restore Exchange mailboxes to live Exchange with Exchange Recovery.
As you have seen, using Exchange Server Recovery is one of the easiest methods to restore mailboxes from Exchange 2016.
Restoring mailboxes from Exchange 2016 can be daunting if you don’t know the exact process to recover the mailboxes. Also, the manual technique is not reliable as it doesn’t guarantee precise recovery. So, you can use Exchange Mailbox Recovery to recover Exchange 2016 mailboxes.