Exmerge 1

[Mottster1]

Here's my situation that I need to resolve:

I had a server that died about 2 months ago, in which I had data recovered from the hard drive. There is 30 days of data I need to migrate into the server that is currently running. I guesing that exmerge is the way to extract the data and migrate it over to the new server.

My question: What is the best way to setup a server with the recovered data. Since the recovered data server has the same name as the existing server name. How do I bring up the recovered data server so that I can access it with exmerge?

Thanks,
Sean

 

[zbnet]

You can restore an online backup to a differently-named server no problem, so long as it is built the same as the original server the backup was taken from: same s/w and patch level, same org and site name (case sensitive). Keep your restore server seperate from your production network whilst you do this.

The MS site has an Exchange 5.5 Disaster Recovery white paper that deals with this situtation.

Exmerge is the correct tool to download the data once you have restored the database. Note that ExMerge does not preserve the single instance storage of the data.

 

[Mottster1]

I've got everything restored and placed in the correct paths. But when I go to start DS, it comes up with an event ID 1234 (basically saying that the server name that was saved in the exchange files is mail-name and not mail-nameold).

Is there anyway to get around this? Ive got a server that is currently running under the name of mail-name.

Thanks,
Sean

 

[zbnet]

Have you read the DR whitepaper I recommended?

You can't restore the Dir.edb from your old server to your new server, because the name of the server is critical to the Dir - which is what your error message is telling you. You should be restoring just the priv.edb (and pub.edb if you like, it's not really relevant) and then creating mailbox objects for the mailboxes in the directory with the DS/IS Consistency Checker. Then you will be able to access the contents of those mailboxes with ExMerge.

 

[Mottster1]

Yes I have been reading the DR whitepaper regarding 5.5. I have a few other questions..

(1) What is the command for running the DS/IS Consistency Checker?
(2) So I shouldn't copy over the dir.edb when copying over from the drive image of the bad hard drive?

Thanks,

Sean

 

[zbnet]

1) Page 14, 'Recover User Mailbox', point 2 covers running the DS/IS Consistency checker in detail.

2) Copying your data from another server rather than from a backup tape is like the offline backup mentioned on the same page (page 14). The steps explicitly say only the priv.edb and the pub.edb.

 

[Mottster1]

Zdnet,

Thanks for the help.. I finally got everything running and was able to use exmerge this morning to merge all missing email data from the old to the new server without any problems.

Only thing i'm still working on is migrating the public folders from the old server to the new one.

Thanks!
Sena

 

[zbnet]

You can also move PFs with a PST file, but you need a user logon with Owner rights on the PF tree (in both the Organisations), and you also need to move the contents manually via a client - drag and drop into a PST.

There's a utility called PFADMIN that is a bit raw, but can be used to record a PF tree's permissions and replicate it on another server - it takes a bit of messing around with, but might be useful if you have a big PF tree.