Exchange Disaster Recovery Scenarios:

Listed (mostly) in Order of Severity

[Question: Which of these have you developed procedures for?]

• Lose an Exchange Server also hosting Active Directory...
  • Lose an AD/Exchange Server when there is only 1 DC in the AD Domain, or, it was the only Global Catalog server
  • Lose an AD/Exchange Server when there is >1 DC in the AD Domain
• Must restore Exchange to a new h'ware platform
• Lose an Exchange Server (where the server is a Member Server)
• Lose an entire cluster node
• Attempting to restore a database(s) from backup performed against an Exchange server that applied a service pack after the backup was performed. This can't be done because the log file formats are incompatible.
• Lose a server hosting an additional specialty service, such as Key Management Server (KMS), Site Replication Service (SRS), or Certificate Services.
• Lose a volume with OS,
         but the Exchange databases and transaction log file volume(s) are in tact.
• Lose a volume holding Exchange database(s),
         but the OS and Exchange transaction log files volume are in tact.
• Lose a volume with Transaction Logs files,
         but the OS and Exchange databases are in tact.
• Lose a Store (for example, corruption)
• Lose a Mailbox outside of the Deleted Mailbox Retention duration
• Lose a message outside of the Deleted Item Retention duration
• Lose a Mailbox within the Deleted Mailbox Retention duration
• Lose a message within the Deleted Item Retention duration

The Point:  Do you have a plan for each one of these scenarios?

Exchange Disaster Recover References:

See also my general reference page on Backup and Disaster Recovery issues, such as recovering an AD Domain Controller to different hardware.

See also my third party products section for high availability and disaster recovery.

How and when to manipulate Exchange transaction logs in disaster recovery.

See this Exchange 2000 Disaster Recovery White Paper

Recommendations for Successful Disaster Recovery, Q185078

Disaster Recovery for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, Q326052

The "Last Backup Set" Checkbox and Hard Recovery in Exchange 2000 (Q232938)

Considering Disaster Recovery in Your Deployment Plan for Exchange 2000, Q328759

HOW TO: Recover the Information Store on Exchange 2000 in a Single Site, Q313184

WebCast: Microsoft Exchange Disaster Recovery, Q325152

Don't forget to look at CommVault^® QiNetix™ from Commvault Systems, which provides a dynamic means of backing up data.