Exchange 2003 Rebuild Disaster....

[jmair]

We're upgrading our server from a raid 1 to a raid 5 with larger hard drives finally. Doing so, we had to replace the onboard raid controller. So far, no problems.

I created an image of GEORGE (the server) with the hopes that i could just pop in the new hardware and zap the image onto the newly upgraded machine thinking that raid happends behind the scenes of the OS and the image should take just fine.... Theory and logic sometimes gets the best of me. failed.

No problem I say to myself, I'll rebuild the server with the same name and ip, I'll import the database and in a ew hours we'll be up and running... failed.

I removed GEORGE from AD and did a i386/setup /disasterrecovery and it acted as though it installed just fine. But when I go to System Manager (the Exchange manager) I cannot connect to GEORGE. "You can not connect to GEORGE, check all your connections and try again... " What???

What do I need to disable, remove or destroy so I can put this exchange server back online (with the same name).

It's now been 24hrs with no Email for the Admin office, and they are officially holding my paycheck hostage.

[adamf]

Isn't the the /disasterrecovery switch only for when the server still exists in AD and you say you've removed it from AD already? I grabbed this from msexchange.org

The reason why we install Exchange 2003 Server using the /DisasterRecovery switch is because the configuration information for the Exchange Server still lives in Active Directory. Installing Exchange 2003 Server using the /DisasterRecovery switch will add all necessary Exchange binaries to the server, as well as restore the default Exchange registry settings and re-register the necessary DLL files etc. without touching the configuration information still held in Active Directory.


That last time I did an exchange rebuild I changed the name (keeping the same IP) becasue it made better sense, once DNS was up-to-date everything was fine.

It might be worth doing a fresh install without the disaster recovery options, changing the name but keeping the same IP. It can't get any worse in it's present state! You've got information store backups etc haven't you?

[jmair]

I did the /distasterrecovery switch because Exchange Objects still reside in AD. I was hoping that it would grab that info and 'run with it'.

If i change the server name, wont the client machines all need to be retargeted to the new exchange server name? Thats really the only reason I wanted to keep it the same name.

I do have the mailboxs backed up.

[zag]

I would be interested to know how you get his up and running, I've always wondered how to restore an exchange server when you just have the mail store backed up.

Its usually a process that would involve building a new server that runs and accepts email then restoring the message store.

I've deleted a test server from active directory before and it didn't seem to leave anything that needed to be cleared up.