When an Outage Becomes an Email Emergency
As the Network Support Manager at UltraWave Networks Pvt Ltd, I never anticipated that an email recovery issue would arise from an infrastructure failure. However, it is precisely what took place.
A portion of our regional network was unavailable for over six hours due to a core switch failure. We've dealt with outages previously; they're painful but recoverable. What it did to our support inbox was something we had not anticipated.
Outlook is used by our service desk, and local OST files are cached against an Exchange profile. Approximately 67,000 support emails became caught in orphaned OST files disconnected from any live mailbox, unreadable and lying on computers we couldn't securely handle without running the risk of further data loss when the outage struck and connectivity broke mid-sync.
At that point, a hardware issue turned into an email issue.
The Problem
Stuck emails are more than just inconvenient for a telecom support desk. They pose a risk to operations.
• Those OST files contained active customer tickets, some of which were connected to company SLAs with stringent response-time requirements.
• Field personnel were troubleshooting blind on repeat calls since they were unable to view previous correspondence.
• We were unable to determine whether clients had already received a callback since the escalation history was unreadable.
The Incomplete compliance records for network-incident communication are problematic when a regulator requests a chronology in the future.
Before we had even begun the recovery process, the clock was already ticking away on our SLA exposure. We were unable to act on the support history for every hour those emails remained locked.
First, we attempted manual mailbox synchronization
Our immediate reaction was to take care of it ourselves. How difficult might it be when we are familiar with Exchange and Outlook?
The strategy:
• Force a resync by reconnecting each impacted workstation to the Exchange profile.
• Manually export any readable OST files into PST if they wouldn't reconnect properly.
• Combine partial PST exports into a searchable format for the support staff.
Why it was unsuccessful:
• Forced resyncs on corrupted OST files either silently dropped message threads or stuck endlessly.
• Only a portion of each mailbox was captured by partial PST exports; certain folders were exported, while others simply disappeared.
• Without manually opening each file, we were unable to determine which tickets had exported and which had not.
• After two engineers worked on this for more than two days, we were able to recover about one-third of the impacted mailboxes.
Support tickets continued to accumulate in the interim. While a true outage recovery was still underway on the network side, we weren't only falling behind; we were also actively losing visibility into client commitments. We were managing two crises concurrently and the manual approach wasn't converging on either, which is what made it untenable.
Making the switch to an automated pipeline for OST to PST
I decided to look for something purpose-built instead of continuing with the laborious labor. Given the stakes, the requirements could not be compromised:
• Instead of processing each file individually, process all 67,000 emails in one batch.
• Not only cleanly-synced mailboxes, but even corrupted and orphaned OST data.
• If you export straight to PST, our support staff can load it into Outlook right away.
• Maintain timestamps, attachments and folder structure; without context, ticket history is meaningless.
• Don't take the help desk any farther offline.
We selected the WholeClear OST to PST Converter after weighing a few options against that list. Rather than presuming a healthy, linked mailbox, which was precisely our circumstance, it was the only solution that specifically addressed corrupted and orphaned OST files.
The Real Story of the Recovery
Mid-crisis, the procedure was simpler than I had anticipated:
• Directed the tool to all impacted machines' OST files.
• Instead of converting one mailbox at a time, do batch conversion across the entire set.
• Directly exported to PST and mapped back to the original folder structure
• Before implementing a sample set across the entire support system, it was checked against known ticket numbers.
What caught my attention:
• Data that could not be accessed by manual export was retrieved. The tool that recovered tickets we had thought were lost was still able to read a number of OST files that wouldn't even resync to Exchange.
• Hours, not days, were involved in batch processing. Instead of requiring more than two days of manual labor, the entire set was processed overnight.
• The timestamps and folder structure arrived undamaged, making escalation history and ticket timelines instantly useable rather than requiring human reconstruction.
Where it failed:
• Because processing 67,000 emails in a single run required a lot of resources, we executed it overnight on a dedicated machine instead of during business hours.
• The UI is useful, unpolished and obviously designed for IT personnel rather than the general public.
• Limited filtering meant that instead of pulling a specific subset up front, we converted everything and sorted afterwards.
That didn't alter the result. Our work schedule was altered as a result.
The Outcomes
• The incident resolution process is about 70% quicker than our manual schedule.
• There was no downtime during restoration; the support desk continued to function as recovery worked in the background.
• The whole ticket and escalation history has been restored; nothing that we could see was missing.
• No more engineer hours were spent on manual file-by-file recovery.
Was It Worth Purchasing?
Yes, without much discussion, against two engineers losing two days apiece due to an unfinished recovery and increasing SLA exposure on corporate accounts. The cost of the tool was less than the time we had already invested in the human attempt, even before accounting for the potential damage to client trust caused by a prolonged delay.
FAQs
During an outage, what causes OST files to become orphaned?
The local OST cache may lose its connection to the Exchange mailbox when connectivity fails in the middle of sync, leaving data stranded on the system.
Is it possible to recover both healthy and corrupted OST files?
In our instance, it was possible to retrieve files through conversion even though they wouldn't resync to Exchange.
In reality, how long does it take to convert tens of thousands of emails?
Our batch operation ran overnight; instead of expecting it to happen right away, budget for actual processing time and devoted system resources.
Does the conversion preserve the ticket history and folder structure?
Yes, that was necessary for us because a support team cannot benefit from ticket history without context.
Is it ever appropriate to recover something this huge by hand?
Perhaps for a few mails. We lost more time than we gained at 67,000 emails during the downtime.
Concluding Remarks
A hardware issue caused the outage. As support tickets continued to pile up, the true concern was nearly losing two days' worth of customer-facing data. It wasn't cunning that helped us get out of it, but rather moving from a manual, file-by-file method to a specially designed recovery pipeline before the backlog became unrecoverable.
If I could impart one piece of advice to another support manager, it would be to not think that manual syncing will grow beyond a few hundred mailboxes. Prior to the outage, rather than during it, be aware of your recovery plan.
