After an unexpected
power outage you are unable to mount your Mailbox Database in Exchange
2010. When you try to manually mount the
Mailbox Database you receive the error "Active Manager failed to mount database
MailDB1 on server exchcas.domain.local. Error: An Active Manager operation
failed. Error The database action failed. Error: Operation failed with message:
MapiExceptionJetErrorRequiredLogFilesMissing: Unable to mount database.
(hr=0x80004005, ec=-543)". Please note I copied the original database file to another location
first, and performed all these actions before I did it on my live database, I
advise you do the same!
I used the following
ESEUTIL command to check the State of the Mailbox Database file.
The /mh switch tells ESEUTIL to check the state of the database.
eseutil /mh “database path”
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As you can see from the screen shot the Database
State is reported as Dirty Shutdown, this makes perfect sense as the
Exchange server lost connectivity unexpectedly.
I then attempted to
use the following ESEUTIL command to repair the Mailbox Database file.
eseutil /p “database path”
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It failed with "Operation
Terminated with Error -1032 (Jet_errFileAccessDenied, Cannt Access File, the
File is Locked or in Use) after 10.47 Seconds" I checked the Event
Logs for more details.
The Event Logs state
that ESEUTIL is trying to create a temporary database file at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\StateMenu\Programs\Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010\temp.edb. As you can see it was reporting an "Access
Denied" error.
As it was trying to
write to the C:\ drive I had to expand my C:\ so that it had enough space for
the temp database
I then tried to run ESEUTIL
/P again and it also failed, with the same error. The fix here was to
change the ACL on the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\StateMenu\Programs\Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010\ directory to allow Everyone Full Control.
When I ran ESEUTIL
/P again it began to work. It returned the following warning "You
should only run Repair on damaged or corrupted databases. Repair will not apply
information in the transaction log files to the database and may cause
information to be lost. Do you wish to proceed?" as my database was
offline and unaccessible I had no option. Please note I copied the original
database file before doing any of this.
The ESEUTIL tool
then started scanning the database, my database was 60GB's and this took
approximately 30 minutes to complete.
At one stage it looked
like the process had hung, so I checked the Event Logs. A Warning "eseutil
(3616) The database enginer lost one or more bad columns of data in one record.
It is highly recommended that an application-level integrity check of the
database be run to ensure application-level data integrity". I decided
to let ESEUTIL run it's course and it did complete.
When it completed it
confirmed it by displaying "Repair completed. Database corruption has
been repaired".
For good practice I
then decided to run a defrag on the Mailbox Database. I used the
following ESEUTIL command to do this;
eseutil /d “database path”
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When the degrag completes you will get the following prompt to confirm it has happened successfully.
Now, as I was performing all of this on a copy of the production database I then copied the file to the original location. Not forgetting to change the name of the original database.
I then opened services.msc and started all of the Exchange Server, services that I had stopped at the beginning of the process.
I enabled Circular Logging temporarily. You can do this by right clicking on the Mailbox Database, clicking Properties and ticking the Enable Circular Logging option. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb331958(v=exchg.141).aspx
I then tried to mount the database and it returned the following error, this was different from before. The error had changed to ErrorAttachedDatabaseMismatch this was to be expected as I had copied the original file.
The fix was to create a new folder called old in the original locations for both the Mailbox Database and the Transaction Logs, then move all of the file into the old folder except the new copy of the mailbox database.
Now when I tried to mount the database it worked successfully.
When you are satisfied that the database is back to a healthy stage, I would disable Circular Logging.
