Ignoring backing up the data is putting all the data at stake. Particularly, taking the backup of Exchange databases is most important to prevent the loss of data contained in the mailboxes. In businesses, emails play a vital role and contain valuable communication and critical information. Naturally, maintainability is required to prevent direct loss to business process.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has not provided ways to recover mailbox from the Exchange database backup. However, good news is that Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 and native Exchange 2010 PowerShell commands can combinedly do it.

The absence of restoring individual mailbox necessitates restoring the Exchange database first, and then restoring the mailbox that user wants to recover.

Below are the steps that can recover mailbox in Exchange 2010. Note that the mailbox will be delivered as a PST file.

1. Figure out on which mailbox server the database of the mailbox is stored. For instance, a mailbox named ‘Thomas’ is placed in DB12 database, which is stored on MAILBOX12 server.

2. In the same database, create a new user with the user name ‘(Recovered)’. For the above example, ‘Thomas (Recovered)’ in DB12.

3. Run the below given Exchange PowerShell cmdlet to activate recovery database on mailbox server (MAILBOX12 for example)

New-MailboxDatabase -Recovery -Name RDB12 -Server MAILBOX12 -EdbFilePath "C:\mountpoints\rdb12-db\RDB12-DB.ebd" -LogFolderPath "C:\mountpoints\rdb12-log"

4. Perform the following in the Data Protection Manager console:

Navigate to ‘Recovery’ tab, point to the left pane and select the name of the Exchange Server where the copy of database (for example, DB12) is stored. In case of Exchange 2010 high-availability DAGs (Database Availability Groups), the database copy will be visible in DPM.

Select the time and date of recovery from the calendar displayed in the right side. In the ‘Recoverable Item’, locate the mailbox, right click it, and then click ‘Recover’

Select recovering Exchange Server database, write server and recovery database names, which has to be restored (for example, MAILBOX12 and RDB12)

Clistellar123stellar123le, ‘Thomas (Recovered)’) and Active Directory account can be deleted.

5. Lastly, run the given Exchange Powershell cmdlet to delete the recovery database: Remove-MailboxDatabase -Identity RDB12

Note that the recovery database files and log folders files will not be removed automatically. They have to be deleted manually.

PS: Sometime you need some spacial technique to recover exchange mailboxes, if your exchange recovery is not possible using above tips then you can find more helpful tips by click here.