Friday, June 27, 2014

Guide to run Eseutil.exe and Isinteg.exe Exchange utilities

For an organization where Exchange Server is in use, Exchange data is the most crucial aspect to take care. Because of indefinite number of reasons, Exchange data can meet to corruption at any time; for that instance, Microsoft provides default tools to safeguard the health of Exchange Information Store.

Exchange administrators can use Eseutil.exe and Isinteg.exe utilities to repair damaged Exchange data. Both the above discussed tools Eseutil.exe and Isinteg.exe are inbuilt tools and responsible for performing Exchange database recovery from the corrupt Exchange Server. However to use Eseutil and Isinteg utilities, one has to dismount the Exchange database from the Exchange Server.

Eseutil.exe – Eseutil is a tool that performs offline defragmentation of Exchange database. When Exchange database gets corrupt then Exchange user can use this tool to restore data from backup file. It is basically a command-line tool that works with ESE (Extensible Storage Engine) database files and log files of Exchange Server. 


Location of Eseutil.exe is - <SystemDrive>:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin.

Limitation of Eseutil.exe –
  1. These tools can be used with single database at a time.
  2.  Also these are not available in latest versions of Exchange. 
  3.  STM files are not supported by Eseutil.
Eseutil switches and the assigned function info -

/D – Defragmentation – Defragment and compact the Exchange database in offline mode. This switch reduces the gross size of file on disk by disposing record of empty pages and by rebuilding indexes. Defrag process takes time as per size of Information store file.

/P – Repair - This mode repairs the offline Exchange database by removing the pages those cannot be fixed. Also this command insures that the Server machine have at least 20% free disc.

/C – Restore - Controls hard recovery after data rebuilding from legacy online backups. 

/R – Recovery - Recovery mentions the process of playing transaction log files into a database. There are two kinds of recovery methods – Hard Recovery and Soft Recovery

Hard recovery – Hard recovery is a process that changes the reestablished database back to its clean shutdown state by playing transactions into the data from transaction log files.

Soft Recovery – Soft recovery is an auto process where Exchange can restore data after an unexpected shutdown such as a computer crash or accidental power down.

Isinteg.exe – On the other hand, Information Store Integrity Checker is responsible for finding and eliminating errors from the Exchange public folders and mailbox databases at application level. This utility most of the time used after Eseutil repair process. Alike Eseutil, this tool is also a command line tool. 

To run Isinteg.exe this tool type mentioned command in command prompt – 

 c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin>isinteg /?

Isinteg.exe switches and the assigned function info –

-?   – Following option is only to display list of available options. Note - This option does not run Isinteg.exe

-s (ServerName) – This command option is to specify the name of the server that hosts the database that you need to test.

-fix – This option is to test and rectify the errors available in information store that you specify. It is always recommended to use this option in presence of any Microsoft Customer Support Services representative.

-verbose – Use this command to get detailed information of performed operations. 

-t refDBLocation – This option is to specify the location of the temporary reference database created by Isinteg during process. 

Both the above discussed utilities can be really helpful but still it is always recommend to newbies and professional who don’t have strong technical background don’t use these commands on crucial data without guidance of an Expert. If you really need to repair Exchange data and you don’t have any expert with you then try “Stellar Phoenix Mailbox Exchange Recovery” tool. This tool is an easy to use, secure and effective way to restore data from corrupt Exchange EDB file. You can check the reviews of this tool on - http://exchangeonline.in/product-review-stellar-phoenix-mailbox-exchange-recovery-v5-0/

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