Exchange Dial Tone Recovery

[JeeMan]

I need a little "grounding" here. We are a multi-site, multi-server organization. We're running Exchange 2003 (non-enterprise). The priv.edb at one of our sites became corrupt (about 20gb). We decided to do a dial tone recovery. When we brought the server up with the blank database, we noticed a few things that seemed strange. One was that the aliases for the email accounts were not there. Another was that we could not send and receive immediately. Is this an ADS issue? E.g. do we need to allow time for ADS to sync when doing this? Each site is its own container and has its own ADS controller. The ADS controller did not fail.

Also, we repaired the old priv.edb and mounted it in a recovery storage group. When we tried to bring it up to transfer mailboxes into the dial-tone database we could not. Any ideas or comments on this? Are there any special steps that we should be aware of?

Thanks for any assistance.

 

[58sniper]

I'm assuming by "ADS Controller" you actually mean Domain Controller.

Can you be more specific about

When we tried to bring it up to transfer mailboxes into the dial-tone database we could not.

Was there an error? What's the event log say?

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[TweakMYbox]

Theres a great article about this on msexchange.org

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-Dial-tone-Restore-Method-Part1.html

Mike Fegan
tweakmybox.com

Get a free iPod at tweakmybox.com!

 

[xmsre]

I'm guessing you did a new build using the /disasterrecovery switch and then mounted the blank databases. THe symptoms still don;t match however, which is confusing.

1 "One was that the aliases for the email accounts were not there." Stamping the addresses is a function of the RUS. Was the exchange server also a domain controller? Where is the domain controller for the domain in wuestion> When you check the properties of the RUS for that domain, what are the endpoints listed?

2. "Another was that we could not send and receive immediately" Were you able to send and receiv e at all?

3. "Is this an ADS issue" It sounds like an issue with the RUS, which depends on a domain controller.