Exchange Raid Recovery

If your Raid crashed - read this info before trying to rebuild!

Raids that have exchange database files on them should be treated different than a file server, this is serving a database and the database is always open while running.

When the raid goes down for whatever reason the database will not be shut down properly and will have errors because of this. This can run from extreme, 0 bytes in the file, to just a dirty shut down. The problem is you can not know which and if it is mission critical, precautions must be taken to save the database.

Everyone ASSUMES that there BACKUP IS GOOD. This is where the trouble starts.
Never assume anything. Until you have restored the database to a DIFFERENT machine and it has been checked. Treat the situation as if you have no backup.

If a hot spare was not part of the raid or the hot spare did not kick in and repair itself, DO NOT try to do a rebuild until you have backed up the system and checked the backup. If you find that the raid went offline and did not run in a crippled state (1 drive missing) DO NOT attempt to bring it online. It failed for a reason and that is you have a serious problem. More than one drive failed and the raid is now broken. Check your backups first on a recovery machine. Taking the easy way out can cost you everything if you have no recourse. Rushing under pressure will do the same thing.

If you have no backup or you find the backup you have is bad. You must clone the drives before you do anything to the raid. Writes to the raid are going to happen to the raid no matter what is done when adding a drive for rebuild. The raid has to scrub itself to correct any bad data pointers and to synchronize the parity across all the drives when ever any major changes are made and doing a rebuild by adding a new drive is major. This means writing to the drives and if the information is wrong the pointers will point to incorrect data areas for retrieving the data.

If the raid is not online and you can’t see the data then you definitely do not want to force a rebuild because you don’t know what is going to be written to the drives.

Exchange database files are sensitive enough with out having bad information written in. If the pointers to the file are incorrect by just one the file is no good and will be difficult to recover.
Clones of the drives at this time must be done. Any problems after this can be corrected by re-cloning the drive. Depending on the raid, controller card and circumstances is what should be done as far recovering the data. This is where experience and knowledge help the most. Time is always critical when it comes to exchange servers and knowing what to do with out trail and error can save days.

Call us at any time for help @ 212-759-0946 or simply fill a request form.