The uninstall should take it out clean, but as with anything else, be careful. The problem I would be most concerned about is the store names (it's supposed to be by GUID with a display name the same as the previous. Because it was a restore, it would be a good idea to make sure that the GUIDs are indeed different. Not sure how it would have started if it wasn't, but..)
They should be located under different paths in the directory, but just to be sure, you may want to ensure you have good AD and Exchange backups. FWIW, this is similar in concept to dial-tone recoverability. It's something that's talked about in E2K3 DR papers. Might be worth a read to see what gets hooked and what doesn't in the directory before proceeding. Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kern, Tom Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 10:21 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT:unusual exchange restore The logical name of the mailstore is the same as the name of the old mailstore(same for storage group). I thought it has to be for a successful restore. I removed exchange attributes for the user i'm trying to exmerge and i was able to reconnect with another user and ran exmerge succesfully. Thanks for all your help, Al. i know i was venturing into uncharted and potentially bad territory here as this is NOT a documented way of restoring a mailbox/info store. I understand you should create a seperate recovery forest(or RSG, if running exchange2k3). However, my company wanted this done now and we had no scsi adapter or tape drive on the recovery server and they didn't want to wait to oder one(though now i realize too late, i might have been able to do this via VMware). I realize thats not a good answer, but its all i've got. I certainly don't want to encourage such bad practices. On a side note, do you know the best method for uninstalling an exchange server cleanly from AD(will it clean up after itself and remove all objects and attributes pointing to itself?). Thanks again. And i would understand if you didn't want to help me earlier as i could've intentionally fubar'ed my AD/Exchange due to my giving in to management so easily. So, thanks alot! -----Original Message----- From: Mulnick, Al [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 9:42 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT:unusual exchange restore What is the mailstore name being reported in AD for the restored server? Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kern, Tom Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 9:37 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT:unusual exchange restore there is not one error in my logs. i bounced the server. mailstores maybe independent, but it is all in AD. the mailstore object is in AD. Its getting this info from somewhere that a user is still connected to a mailbox(AD). when i use ESM, i'm connected to AD. so logic tells me this error i'm getting is from an attribute in AD still referencing the wrong object. thanks -----Original Message----- From: Mulnick, Al [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 9:29 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT:unusual exchange restore I wouldn't think so. Have you tried bouncing the store service on that restored server? I don't recall if the restore programs are smart enough to try to recover the mailstores, but the stores themselves are independent of the directory objects. That said, it's a matter of getting the reconnect to a new object. What's in the application event log during all of this on the restored machine? Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kern, Tom Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 9:25 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT:unusual exchange restore i have run the cleanup agent and i have new users to connect them to, however when i try to reconnect, i get the error that the mailbox is already connected. i think the problem is, when i redirected the restore, the mailboxes or the info store on the new server still references the old users in AD. Then when exmerge runs it checks a gc to get AD users based on the mailbox attribute and gets nothing for that server. As i said, i redirected the restore to a new server in the same forest. so the redirected mailboxes are referencing users that still exist but point to different mailboxes. my idea is- since the user i'm trying to pst is gone, maybe if i delete exchange attributes for that user AND then use an account to reconnect to? thanks -----Original Message----- From: Mulnick, Al [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 9:02 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT:unusual exchange restore Do you have new user objects to connect them to? Have you run mailbox cleanup agent? Once restored, these are just data store entries. There is no DS/IS concept to automatically create directory objects, so you have to create objects for them. In your case, you *should* be able to create objects and connect one of these. The old users are not relevant really. The error is expected. MBCONNECT might be an interesting tool for you as well. Al -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kern, Tom Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 6:37 PM To: ActiveDir (E-mail) Subject: [ActiveDir] OT:unusual exchange restore Hi. I had to restore my info store from a few months back for legal reasons. However, the upper management did not want to shell out for a tape drive or scsi controller so i tried redirecting a db restore to a new exchange2k server in the same forest/admin group( i know there are no docs on this and ms and everyone recommends a new forest). this worked and everything restored with no issues. however, i cannot reconnect to the mailboxes thru ESM. I get a "this operation cannot be performed because this mailbox was reconnected to an exisiting user". all the mailboxes have a red X in them, impiling they are not connected to any users after running the cleanup agent. And yes, the old users exist and have mailboxes on another server. i'm unable to run exmerge on these boxes- it gives me a "no users were found containing mailboxes" so its a chicken and egg thing now. any ideas would be great. thanks List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/
