Using Acronis Active Restore for database recovery

Acronis Active Restore brings up Microsoft Exchange services online in minutes allowing users to access their e-mails while the Exchange databases or storage groups are still being recovered.

How it works

1. Once the recovery task is started, the Exchange databases are dismounted.
2. The transaction log files, checkpoint files, and other Exchange files required for recovery are copied from the backup to the target destination.
3. The backed up databases are mounted virtually from the archive to the target destination. The file system and the Exchange server treat these virtual databases files as physical ones.
4. The virtual databases are mounted to the Exchange server and transaction logs are applied to the databases. The Exchange server becomes operational and ready to provide services. Users can send and receive e-mails, work with their mailboxes, contacts, calendar and e-mails even though they are not yet recovered.

   The Acronis Active Restore drivers intercept Exchange user queries and set the immediate priority for recovery of the Exchange items that are necessary to serve the incoming requests. While this on-the-fly recovery proceeds, the continuing database recovery process is transferred to the background.

5. The background recovery of physical databases continues until all the selected databases are recovered. After the recovery is completed, the virtual databases are dismounted and the physical databases are mounted to the Exchange server, which takes less than a minute.