Exchange Server 2003 transaction logs are not replayed

When you perform a recovery from a backup of Exchange 2003 transaction logs, you may notice that some log files are not replayed, and you may see the following event in the Application event log:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: ESE
Event Category:
Event ID: 301
Date: 10/17/2002
Time: 5:52:11 AM
User: N/A
Computer: server_name
Description: Information Store (1728) The database engine has begun replaying logfile H:\Apps\Exchange\MDBDATA\E0014553.log. For more information, click http://search.support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1.

This behavior may occur if the information store does not have access to the Microsoft Active Directory directory service. During the recovery procedure, the information store process queries Active Directory for the existence of the database GUID that is represented by the transaction log files in the Exchsrvr\Mdbdata log folder. If the GUID is not located, these logs are determined to be from a different database. The soft recovery process does not commit these transactions.

To work around this behavior and replay the logs, you must copy all the transaction logs that you want to recover to the temporary restore folder that you defined in the restore process. To copy all the transaction logs that you want to recover to the temporary restore folder and then replay the logs, follow these steps:

1. Restore all the online backups to the recovery server:
   1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup.
   2. Click the Restore tab, click to select the files to restore, and then click Start Restore.
   3. In the Restoring Database Store dialog box, type the name of the folder where you want to temporarily locate the log files in the Temporary location for the log and patch files box, and then click OK.
      
      Important Do not click to select the Last Backup Set check box. You can only copy all the transaction logs to the temporary restore folder before you start the manual replay process if you leave this check box unselected.
   4. In the Enter Backup File name dialog box, enter the location of the backup file, and then click OK.
2. Copy all the offline log files to the Temp_restore_folder\Storage_group_name folder, where Temp_restore_folder is the temporary restore folder that you defined in the restoration process and Storage_group_name is the name of the storage group.
3. Make sure that the log files are contiguous.
   
   Log replay only plays forward as long as the sequence is contiguous. When the sequence is interrupted, replay stops.
4. After you are satisfied with the state of the log files, switch to the Temp_restore_folder\Storage_group_name folder, and then run either of the following commands from the command prompt:
   
   c:\exchsrvr\bin\eseutil /cc
   
   -or-
   
   c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin\eseutil /cc
   
   
   These commands force an Eseutil manual log recovery. After this process is complete, you can manually mount the databases that you restored. In the Application event log, an Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) event ID 204 information message is logged to indicate the start of recovery, and then a series of ESE event ID 301 information messages are logged. These information messages indicate the exact log numbers that are recovered. Finally, an ESE event ID 205 information message is logged to indicate that the recovery process is complete.

If you use the procedure that is described in the Workaround section of this article on a production server or on a recovery server that has access to a copy of Active Directory, the soft recovery process can validate the database GUID, and the logs are replayed as expected.

The following events indicate the logs that are replayed during the recovery process.

Note The event ID 204 information message indicates that log replay has begun.

The event ID 204 information message is similar to the following message:


The event ID 204 information message is followed by a series of ESE event ID 301 information messages that describe the exact log files that are being recovered. These event ID 301information messages are similar to the following message:

When log recovery is complete, an ESE event ID 205 information message is logged. This event ID 205 information message is similar to the following message:

After the ESE event ID 205 information message is logged, several more ESE event ID 301 information messages may be logged. Then an ESE event ID 494 error message is logged to indicate that the database GUID that is represented in the log files cannot be located in Active Directory and that these logs will not be recovered. The event ID 494 error message is similar to the following message:

Finally, an ESE event ID 454 error message is logged to complete the process. The event ID 454 error message is similar to the following message: