Exchange 5.5 DR technical advise needed!

[henrymsilva]

Hi All,

I needs some technical advice ... my situation is like this: I had an Exchange Server 5.5 on NT 4.0 OS. This server had an external Hard Disk tower where all my Exchange database resides. Unfortunately my CPU box encountered a HW failure so i'm currently rebuilding a new machine. Since the exchange database is still intact, is it possible that I'll just restore the file system from backup (am using ARCServe 6.6) onto the new machine and still make use of the database in my external harddrive? If is, what is the right way to do it?

Thanks.

 

[johnics]

Build your new server exactly the same as your old server and attach the external drive tower. It should see the databases just fine.

 

[Sparks48]

You may have to run some Exchange utilites to make the databases consistent. Even though the databases are intact , a hard shutdown would cause an inconsistency in the transaction logs. Since Exchange has a rolling database and if a transaction log being sequential is truncated then the services will not start. Utilites such as isinteg -patch or the eseutil utilites. Microsoft has a disaster recovery procedure for Exchange on their site.

 

[MarkSe]

Sparks is right depending upon the state of the store you may have to run some checks to ensure that the store is in a clean shut down state.I would run eseutil /g and a /mh. Find out exactly what state the store(s) are in and also what transaction logs are required. I assume you will still ahve the logs since the last backup so its just a case of ensuring the store is consitent and that the logs are in the right place. I would not be suprised if even the normal soft recovery can deal with this.

HTH,

Mark