Find Out Solutions to Recover Emails From Exchange Log Files

Once in a while, a situation might occur in which the Exchange administrator looks for a solution to recover emails from Exchange log files. Well, while performing any transaction, a specific set of rules are to be followed, which are described below:

Atomic: This property notifies that either all transaction operations are completed successfully or all are incomplete.

Consistent: A database must be an inconsistent state, after completion of the whole transaction. None of the transaction must be having an adverse effect on the data available in the database.

Isolated: If more than one transactions are taking place simultaneously then, this property states that all the transaction should be carried out and executed like an individual transaction within the system.

Durability: It states that the database should be durable enough to hold all its recent updates, even if the machine fails or restarts.

Similar Post- Recover Deleted Emails From Exchange Server 

Consider a scenario in which an email of Inbox mail folder is to be transferred to a new folder, say ‘New’. In such case, below-mentioned logical operations will be performed by the Exchange server:

• Remove email from the Inbox folder
• Put that mail in New folder
• Refresh both the folders and view changes

Different Recovery States in the Server to Recover Emails From Exchange Log Files

There are two scenarios, which causes shut down in the server: Dirty Shutdown and Clean Shutdown. Based upon these, the database is divided into two state i.e., consistent and inconsistent

Consistent Database: When the database gets terminated properly in a proper manner, the outstanding log file transactions are updated in the database. This state gives a statement that database has detached itself from log files and is in the clean shutdown state.

Inconsistent Database: A situation where transactions are waiting to be written to the database but the server gets interrupted and is terminated accidentally then, database remains attached with the transaction log files. The pages for modification are titled as dirty shutdown

Email Recovery From Exchange Log Files

A user can easily recover emails from Exchange log files or Exchange EDB files. Before proceeding further with the procedure to repair Exchange Server Mailboxes from Log file, it is mandatory to learn the major difference between two general terms i.e., Restore and Recovery.

• The word restore means locating log files and database on the server default location
• The term recovery means replaying log files into the restored database
• There are following two-way by which one can recover emails from Exchange log files:

1. Soft Recovery: After facing an unanticipated interruption, when a database is remounted on the server the procedure of replaying transaction log files comes in this soft recovery. The Exchange server itself performs recovery for committing its pending transactions to log file just by reading checkpoint file.

This method of recovery is done against offline database copy and is performed using ESEutil tool. The syntax used to recover emails from Exchange log files is given below:

2. Hard Recovery: This procedure of log files recovery involves replaying of the database from an online backup. Hard recovery can be processed automatically when the Last Backup Set is enabled during restoration. This is somewhat similar to soft recovery procedure but is different in an aspect that instead of the checkpoint file, restore.end file could be used for recovering log files.

On the other hand, if Last Backup Set is disabled during restoration then, it can manually be performed via ESEutil. With help from a reliable source, one can restore the online backup. After completion of the procedure, a Restore.end file will be created in a Temporary folder of the system.

Against Exchange EDB file one can recover log files in the restore.env file with help of the following syntax:

Moreover, it is essential to be aware of the fact that adding an additional log file to replay might not prove itself as a good idea here. With the help of this technique, only those log files will be restored, which are available in the restore.end file and also by using this exclusive technique it’s very easy to recover emails from Exchange log files.

Observational Verdict

All possible measures to recover emails from Exchange log files are described in this blog. However, there are chances where these approaches might fail, therefore, here is an alternative solution for the same. This alternative solution is Exchange Recovery software, which provides a graphical user interface mode to either recover emails from or recover database from an EDB file and save it in any of the desired file formats.