Suspend or resume a mailbox database copy in Exchange Server

Article
02/22/2023

You may need to suspend or resume a database copy for a variety of reasons, such as maintenance on the disk that contains the database copy. Or you may need to suspend an individual database copy from activation for disaster recovery purposes.

Looking for other management tasks related to mailbox database copies? Check out Manage mailbox database copies.

What do you need to know before you begin?

Estimated time to complete this task: 1 minute
To open the EAC, see Exchange admin center in Exchange Server. To open the Exchange Management Shell, see Open the Exchange Management Shell.
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Mailbox database copies" entry in the High availability and site resilience permissions topic.
For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts in the Exchange admin center.

Tip

Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at: Exchange Server, Exchange Online, or Exchange Online Protection.

Suspend a mailbox database copy

Use the EAC to suspend a mailbox database copy

In the EAC, go to Servers > Databases.
Select the database whose copy you want to suspend.
In the Details pane, under Database Copies, click Suspend under the database copy you want to suspend.
In the Comments field, add an optional comment of up to 512 characters specifying the reason for the suspension.
To suspend the database copy from automatic activation, select the This copy can only be activated by manual intervention check box.
Click save to suspend the database copy.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to suspend a mailbox database copy

This example suspends continuous replication for a copy of the database DB1 hosted on the server MBX1. An optional comment has also been specified.

Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity DB1\MBX1 -SuspendComment "Maintenance on MBX1" -Confirm:$False

This example suspends activation for a copy of the database DB2 hosted on the server MBX2.

Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity DB2\MBX2 -ActivationOnly -Confirm:$False

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy.

Resume a mailbox database copy

Use the EAC to resume a mailbox database copy

In the EAC, go to Servers > Databases.
Select the database whose copy you want to resume.
In the Details pane, under Database Copies, click Resume under the database copy you want to resume.
Click yes to resume the database copy.

Use the Exchange Management Shell to resume a mailbox database copy

This example resumes a copy of the database DB1 on the server MBX1.

Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity DB1\MBX1

This example resumes a copy of the database DB2 on the server MBX2 for replication only.

Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity DB2\MBX2 -ReplicationOnly

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy.

How do you know this worked?

To verify that you have successfully suspended or resumed a mailbox database copy, do one of the following:

In the EAC, navigate to Servers > Databases. Select the appropriate database, and in the Details pane, click View details to view the database copy properties:
In the Exchange Management Shell, run the following command to display status information for a database copy:
```
Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus <DatabaseCopyName> | Format-List
```