Rebuild Exchange 2013 Database Mailbox By PowerShell Commands

admin | November 8th, 2017 | Exchange Server

Are you looking for a solution to rebuild Exchange 2013 database mailbox using PowerShell commands? Yes? Then, you are absolutely at the correct place. Here, one is going to find the solution to recover mailbox from exchange 2013 with help of a new database i.e., RDB (Recovery database).

Microsoft Exchange server is one of the most widely used servers. It is utilized in small-scale as well as large-scale industries. An EDB file also known as the Exchange database is used as the local storage files of the server. This file comprises of emails, contacts, tasks, journals, etc., which are related to all users mailboxes. These files are stored on the local machine, which means that they are highly prone to the corruption or damage. This issue arises the chances of making the file inaccessible for working. These kind of server issues are very much harmful to end users who are enterprise or at large business level.

Quick Glance About Recovery Database in MS Exchange 2013

A RDB or Recovery database is a specific type of mailbox, which enables users to mount and fetch data from the regained mailbox database. It is considered as the part of rebuilding procedure that permits one to retrieve items from the database copy or backup without interrupting the user’s ongoing activity. Once the RDB is created in Exchange 2013 server, users will be able to restore mailbox database to RDB through a backup procedure or by process of copying database and its log files. Now, one can take help of New-MailboxRestoreRequest command for extracting items from an already recovered database. When this is completed, the items can be moved to a folder or combined into the existing mailbox.

Requirements Before Rebuild Exchange 2013 Database Mailbox

Following points are be verified before recovering mailboxes from MS Exchange 2013 :

  • Users must be having complete permissions from Recipients end to attempt the recovery procedure.
  • Backup applications are required to restore the Exchange data to the recovery database. The Windows server backup tool is a perfect utility to restore file-level backups to the recovery database. This can be utilized for retrieving application-level backups for recovering items.
  • The recovered database and its log files must be moved or copied in the RDB folder structure.
  • The state of the database should be in the clean shutdown. All the recovered databases are going to be in dirty shutdown state because the recovered database is the alternate restore path for all databases. Users need to execute Eseutil /R command for putting restored data into the clean shutdown state.

Solution to Rebuild Exchange 2013 Database Mailbox

With help of following steps, users will be able to rebuild Exchange 2013 mailbox using PowerShell commands :

  • Copy the extracted database and all its log files to a location where you will be using recovery database
  • Use the following command for bringing the database in the clean shutdown state :

rebuild exchange 2013 database mailbox

where, EXX indicates the log generation prefix, and RDBLogFilePath requires the location of the log file

  • Now it is the time to create a recovery database in Microsoft Exchange 2013. You need to provide a unique name for the database

recover mailbox from exchange 2013

where, EdbFilePath parameter requires Exchange database file name and path, and LogFilePath parameter requires location of recovered log files. You can more clearly understand this point by taking an example. Suppose you want to create a RDB in Exchange 2013, which is used to extract DB1.edb with its log files. These files are stored at E:\Databases\RDB1. Now, in this case, the Shell command will be in the following way :

rebuild exchange 2013 mailbox

  • Now it is the time to restart the MS Exchange information store service via following Shell command :

start exchange information store service

  • Use ‘Mount-database ’ command to mount the recovery database in MS Exchange 2013
  • Check that the database mounted in Step (5) comprises of mailboxes, which you want to restore. For this, you can utilize following command :

mount database

  • Now it is the time to move the items from RDB to the production mailbox with help of New-MailboxRestoreRequest. This you can understand with help of an example.
    Suppose you are having a mailbox having MailboxGUID – 1d20855f-fd54-4681-98e6-e249f7326ddd on the mailbox database DB1. You want to restore this mailbox to the targeted mailbox i.e., alias Morris. Then, in this case, you can follow below-mentioned command :

mailbox restore request

The following command restores entire content of the source mailbox, which is having name ‘Morris Cornejo’ on the DB1 mailbox database to archive mailbox for Morris@contoso.com

archive mailbox

  • Timely examine the live status of Mailbox restore request with help of Get-MailboxRestoreRequest command. When this restore procedure gets successfully completed, erase the active restore request via Remove-MailboxRestoreRequest.

get mailbox restore request

Observational Verdict

Users can check the whether the problem to rebuild Exchange 2013 database mailbox is successfully resolved or not. For this, they have to open targeted mailbox in MS Outlook or OWA and examine for the same. However, if the problem does not gets resolved then, users need to opt for Exchange recovery software. This software is provided to give a hassle-free solution for fixing all errors and problems related to the EDB file.