Removing a problematic Exchange 2013 Installation

[dsearles]

Hi,

Got a bit of a strange question here... hoping someone may be able to offer some advice.

 

I’ve inherited an Exchange 2007 email environment with 1700 ish mailboxes. In my Exchange Organisation there is also a 2013 server presence which consists of 2 x Client Access Servers and 3 Mailbox servers, which have been set-up as part of a DAG (along with a DAG Witness Server).

 

The person who set this up, has since left the company, and left no documentation – great…

 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’m totally in the dark as to where he got to with the set-up and configuration. I know for certain that no mailboxes ever got to the 2013 servers, and apart from being physically there, they are not used for anything. I’m having various issues (mailbox databases won’t mount, can’t move mailboxes from 2007 to 2013 etc) and I’m starting to think I’d be better off starting again. To be honest the DAG set-up is most probably overkill for our environment, especially as we are hosting all of these servers in VMWare.

 

So, basically, my question is, has anyone ever had to remove 2013 Server from their organisation, and then re-introduce a fresh installation? What are the pitfalls, and should it be attempted?

 

Is it just a case of removing Exchange from the said servers, keeping a couple of servers that will run all the exchange roles and start again? (I definitely want to ditch the DAGS)

 

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Sagima]

It sounds horrible - when I got here I found the remnants of both 2000 and 2003 exchange installations that was causing odd issues and I spent a weekend uninstalling all the exchange bits, going through AD and removing the exchange bits (with ADUC and ADSI) then reinstalling 2003, restoring the backups and then migrating to 2007 the same weekend (I think it was Easter weekend 2008 - it was just after the first patch following SP1 anyone) and moving on from there.

I missed something because I couldn't install exchange 2010 until I found whatever it was hidden away which I removed with ADSI edit as well - google was of great assistance then - less so with my original problems.

Doing that broke 2007 and I had to quickly google a fix but then it was fine and has been ever since.

It was handy that one of my main role at my previous employer was to look after exchange 2003 (seemingly because none of the rest of the IT dept wanted to be involved with it) so I knew how it was supposed to be functioning even if I had never gone that much into troubleshooting it.

 

What you can do:

Well you can run the installer again on each of the servers with exchange components to remove exchange 2013 (if it's being used to route email then make sure you change your 2007 settings so it becomes the sender/receiver to/from the internet).

Make sure you disable your antivirus first otherwise it takes hours rather than minutes.

You won't be able to uninstall completely unless you get shift the system/arbitration mailboxes somewhere else though - that might require a bit of googling as I doubt you can send them back to a 2007 server

You might have to use ADSI edit to remove the active directory bits of 2013 that are left over - just so you don't acquire anything odd when you put it back. The exchange 2007 and 2013 bits are different but double check everything with google to make sure its a 2013 setting and not a 2007 one. Enough people break exchange in every conceivable way that a workaround for every problem probably exists somewhere!

 

I think you might find it easier just to instead remove the all but one of the bits of the exchange 2013 installation with the installer and then use the installer to put all of the roles onto your favourite/remaining server and then try your mailbox migration to it. If you don't have a wildcard certificate I'd recommend getting one.

 

If you do remove 2013 completely I think I probably wouldn't revert to 2007 but wipe the server you want exchange on and then immediately reinstall 2013 the way you want it and migrate from 2007 pretty much immediately as well.

 

 

Plan B would be to migrate everyone's email to office 365 one weekend but that seems a bit drastic just so you can uninstall exchange.

 

Ding almost any of this might take your email system down so make sure your backups work and don't do it during the day.

[dsearles]

Hi Sagima,

 

Thanks a bunch for the reply mate, it really helps as it happens... (sounds like you share my pain - haha) I think I just need to decide on which path to proceed. I guess it's the fact that I've inherited someone else's work, is why I'm kind of blinkered into starting again (whilst I still can).

 

Mail is flowing internally and externally from 2013 so they've most probably got right to the end of the implementation. However, the DAGS that were created won't mount, and when I try to move a mailbox from 2007 to 2013 (to a newly created Mailbox Database that will mount) it fails with the following error:

 

"Mailbox"

Failed

Error:

The address list service on the server '2013' is not running. An Exchange 2007 server on which an address list service is active cannot be found.

An Exchange 2007 server on which an address list service is active cannot be found.

Exchange Management Shell command attempted:

'domain/Network Team/TEST/Mail Test' | move-mailbox -TargetDatabase 'TestDB'

Elapsed Time: 00:00:01I su

 

Any ideas??

 

I suppose what I'm thinking is that I may just continue with what I've got... maybe ditching the DAG's and starting again, but I need to be able to migrate mailboxes across.... blooming heck, it's one thing or another - haha!

[pantscat]

The address list service on the server '2013' is not running. An Exchange 2007 server on which an address list service is active cannot be found.

An Exchange 2007 server on which an address list service is active cannot be found.

 

Hi dsearles...

 

Is the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service running? Try restarting it...

[Sagima]

I would probably remove the DAGs - I've never seen a need to have them here. I'm an all roles in one place person - I've discussed email recovery as part of disaster recovery with SMT and they were happy that should the worst happen I could get a server up and running and the previous evenings backups restored in about 4-6 hours to a VM which they said was completely reasonable. Restoring 7 TB of files was deemed to take too long so I have DFS replicas of the fileserver in case that goes wrong - each system was looked at like that. I even have plans for losing a server room that don't include using DAGs (obviously restoring everything in the event of the school failing to exist one morning might be problematic but I can't plan for everything on this departments budget).

 

Anyway - just so you don't think I'm waffling about DR and if the service doesn't sort out your problems (there are a lot of services you might want to check are running)

You can install exchange 2013 over itself if the install is a bit buggrd - use the same version you have installed as part of Exchange DR. Unpack the ISO/downlaod into a folder and from the command prompt navigate there and type:

Setup /m:RecoverServer

command prompt because although exchange uses powershell for everything else you can't actually use it to install or repair it. You can do the repair on the 2007 server too (this will probably stop your exchange environment from running while it's going). Turn off/uninstall your AV while it does it otherwise it will take hours

Hopefully that will fix it/them sufficiently you can uninstall the bits you don't want (dags) and pop the mailbox role back where it should be.

 

I once did that when I foolishly asked one of my colleagues to "install the windows updates on the servers" one holiday and didn't even think he might do an exchange 2010 update via windows updates (well he tried to do that - it failed miserably and the recoverserver thing sorted it out in abut 20 minutes after I spent most of an hour thinking thoughts best left unmentioned). I really just meant the normal security updates and I'm a bit clearer now when I ask that.

 

I think you might be happier removing as much of 2013 as you can and then starting again following a basic guide (any of the 2013 sp1 guides will be fine) so that you feel more comfortable with it and a bit more reassured that there isn't some other configuration that looked like a good idea to someone but you aren't aware of.