Exchange: Building an Exchange Recovery Server

There are benefits of creating an Exchange Recovery Server such as validating backups, running Exchange database utilities to test for corruptions or inconsistencies and performing offline restores without impacting the performance of your production Exchange Server. One issue that you may encounter when rebuilding an Exchange Recovery Server is if your Exchange Organization was a product of a 5.5 migration. If so, you will not be able to mount the database on the recovery server. This is due to the descrepancy in the legacydn from your restore server and your production server.


Method 1:

1. Create new forest new domain name, give new hostname
2. Install AD
3. Install Exchange, make sure your Exchange org name is the same as your production org name
4. Make sure servers are patched exactly the same or mounting will fail.
4. Make sure all DB locations, log path partions are the same.

If your 2003 was a product of a 5.5 migration, than mounting will fail because the legacydn of the restore server does not match the legacydn of the production server.

1. Open command prompt. Type ldifde -f c:\exchange.txt -d "CN=Microso ft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=fabrikom,DC=com" -p subtree
2. Open the file Exchange.txt. In the text file search for "First Administrative Org" There may be up to 25 entries. When you encounter the first match you need to locate it in adsiedit and change First Administrative Org to the Exchange org name of your production Exchange.
3. Once you have found the first match. Open run box and enter adsiedit.msc (From windows support tools)
4. If you're familiar with adsiedit you need to go to your Exchange Configuration Container à Services à Microsoft Exchange. You should see your org name. Most of the matches will be within this subfolder. Find the match and change the legacydn of your restore server (first admin org) to match the orginal org name. So basically anywhere you see "First Administrative Org" you need to change to your production org name. If you do not do this mounting will fail.


James Chong (MVP)
MCITP | EMA; MCSE | M+, S+
Security+, Project+, ITIL
msexchangetips.blogspot.com


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