Restoring data to a recovery or alternate database

By using the restore into function, you can restore an Exchange Server database backup, or DAG active or passive database backup copy into a recovery database or into an alternate (or relocated) database.

Before you begin

You can restore data interactively with the Mailbox Restore Browser or directly from Exchange database files. In some rare cases, however, you might want to manually restore mailboxes by using the recovery database. You use VSS restore to manually restore mailboxes by using the recovery database.
To restore data into a recovery database or alternate database, a recovery database or alternate database must exist before you attempt the restore operation.
Running any type of restore into function automatically disables VSS Instant Restorecapability.
For VSS restores, the mailbox database to be restored must be in the same Administrative Group. The backup must be taken on the same version of Exchange Server for the restore to complete.
You must run the restore from an account that has Receive As and Send As permissions on all mailboxes to be restored.
You cannot use multiple instances of Data Protection for Microsoft Exchange to restore databases into the recovery database simultaneously.
Backups to LOCAL can be restored only to the system where the backups are created.

About this task

Information about recovery database processing is written to the Data Protection for Microsoft Exchange activity log file (tdpexc.log by default).

Procedure

Use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to create the recovery database if one does not exist. You can also use PowerShell commands (cmdlets) to do this step.
Use Data Protection for Microsoft Exchange to restore the mailbox database.
For VSS Restore operations, use either of the following methods to select the name of the database into which a VSS backup is restored:
1. Issue the INTO command to select the database to restore into.
2. From the MMC, right-click the backup that you want to restore, and click Restore Into, or select the backup and click Restore Into in the Actions pane. For example, if Maildb1 is the name of the relocated database that is being restored, the command-line entry is as follows:
```
TDPEXCC RESTore Maildb1 FULL /INTODB=Maildb1
```
  Only transaction logs that are contained in the backup are applied to the mailbox database when a recovery database restore operation is processing.
When you restore data to a recovery database, specify the option to replay restored logs only; otherwise the restore can fail.
1. Issue /recover=applyrestoredlogs on the command line.
2. Select Replay Restored Logs ONLYon the Restore tab.