Dell EqualLogic Host Integration Tools for Microsoft Edition Version 5.4 Release Notes

Verification and soft recovery of Exchange replica Smart Copies are performed on the replication partner. Verification consists of two steps: the actual verification, and the soft recovery, where the database is brought from a dirty shutdown state to a clean shutdown state. Soft recovery requires read-write access to the database. In the case of replica Smart Copies, this process requires some additional planning.

You can give read-write access to the Smart Copy in the following ways:

• Promote the replica set to a recovery volume
• Clone the replica, which creates a new volume

A promoted replica will remain promoted only while verification is running. As soon as verification completes, the replica is demoted again, and replication can resume. However, any changes made to the replica during the soft recovery phase of replication are discarded when the replica is demoted, because replication for any given volume is one way. No mechanism is available for replicating changes made on the replication partner back to the original volume.

If you want to mount a replica Smart Copy of an Exchange database on your Exchange server (for example, during a Restore as New operation in ASM/ME), you must manually run soft recovery on that Smart Copy first, even though soft recovery was run during the verification process. You can perform a manual soft recovery by using the Exchange Eseutil utility.

This restriction applies only to replica Smart Copies. Snapshots and clones do not require this extra step.