What is a Recovery Database?
In Exchange 2016, a Recovery database (RDB) is a mailbox database that allows you to mount a restored Exchange database from a backup and extract data from it for restore and recovery operations. You can recover data from a recovery database without affecting the Exchange server's current or primary database. The RDB is created with the Exchange Management Shell (EMS) and can only be used for recovery purposes but not for backups. Furthermore, the RDB is only supported in Exchange 2016 and later versions.
Learn more about Recovery database in Exchange server
Prerequisites for recovering mailbox with RDB
Before you create the RDB, ensure that you meet the following prerequisites
- Ensure that you have the Organization Management permissions on the mailboxes. See the recipient permissions in Exchange server for creating the RDB.
- You must copy the recovered database and log files manually to the RDB folder
- You may have to perform a soft repair on the recovered database and bring it to the clean shutdown with eseutil/r.