Improved Database Integrity Checking in Exchange Server 2010 SP1

Exchange administrators will be familiar with the ISInteg tool (Information Store Integrity Checker) as a way to check and repair Exchange database integrity.

A pain point with the tool in the past has been that it can only be run on a database that is offline.  This means that an otherwise operational database needs to be dismounted to run ISInteg to fix any suspected integrity problem.  For Exchange administrators this usually means a long night running the tool outside of business hours to minimize interruption to end users.

Which is why this announcement from the Microsoft Exchange Team blog is great news.

In Exchange 2010 SP1, ISInteg is no longer a standalone program.

With the release of Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 2010 two new Exchange Management Shell cmdlets will be available:

• New-MailboxRepairRequest
• New-PublicFolderDatabaseRepairRequest

Each one performs validation and fixing of integrity issues for the respective database type.

The best improvement is that the tools no longer need to run on dismounted databases.  In fact they are required to run on mounted databases.

These new ISInteg cmdlets come with some cool new functionality!

• The cmdlets work with the database mounted. It’s no longer required to unmount the database to perform an integrity check or fix database errors.
• You can repair logical corruption at the mailbox level.
• You can fix corrupt search folders.
• You can fix Aggregate Counts.
• You can fix the Provisional Fid.

Because the tools run against mounted databases, and can perform their operations at the mailbox level, mailbox repairs will only affect the owner of that mailbox instead of every mailbox user connected to that database.

Another useful new feature is that the tools now output their progress to the Event Log instead of to text files, making monitoring of repair requests much easier to manage.

Overall a big improvement and one that will benefit Exchange administrators when they are dealing with database corruption scenarios.