Ghosted Server- Exchange wont start tho

[bchizary]

Hi, i recently ghosted one of our NT servers onto an identical machine, same hardware, same disks, only difference is less RAM. Iv booted to NT (4 by the way) and windows is fine, the drives that are shared are all ok, all the user profiles etc are fine, but when the exchange services start i get some errors in the event log-

First of all Error -1022 has occured.
Then Microsoft Exchange SErver Database (EDB) could not be initialised and returned error -1022
Finally it says The directory was shutdown successfully.

Just wondering if any of you guys have ideas on this one

Thanks
Ben

 

[adcfaq]

hi Ben, you never heard about the SID, when u ghost a box, you need to change the SID.

 

[bchizary]

not heard of that- so havnt done it- il have to look into it (can you give me any pointers on it?)

Cheers

 

[ratbs75]

wait for confirmation of another member, but i guess you'll need to use the ISINTEG patch on the exchange files.....

 

[Alshrim]

Ya.. That would be a start --

Isinteg -patch applies the new guid's to the IS and DS containers..

But supposing that the original server is offline.. and you ghost this one -and just bring it up - the SIDS and everything should be identical..

Now did you remove it from the domain and readd it or something?? if so - the sid would change and isinteg is definately the way to go.

Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet

 

[bchizary]

the machine isnt plugged into the network, i ghosted the hard drives (3 in total) and booted it stand alone. i will try the isinteg tomorrow morning and let you know what the crack is

thanks
Ben

 

[Alshrim]

Is it a member of the domain yet? Like the other one?

Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet

 

[bchizary]

nope- the nt machine in question is the domain controller so i couldnt plug in an identical machine with the same ip and machine name and join it to the same domain. The idea of the machine is a form of disaster recovery- so we have the primary machine sitting on the network, daily backing up etc. If there is a major problem, we simply take the ghost machine, which is identical in both hardware, and software, and plug that in there the primary machine was, and if it has the latest backups applied to it, then we have little or no down time.

Think that makes sense!.....

 

[cfjdugan]

If the server is a BDC that would explain the non starting services but there is something else going on if it is the PDC.
When you ghosted the machine were the services and OS running at the time or did you use a slave OS to read the disks and perform the ghost? If you did it under the running OS then the isinteg and eseutil should be able to get the db's to a consistent state and get you running. If not then something else is going wrong, do a chkdsk /r /f on the drive holding the exchange databases to check for any media errors.

Chris

 

[Alshrim]

I see what you've done .. either way however, - if your DC pooches and takes your exchange with it.. you'll be forced to do another known-good recovery to your backup Exchange server - and still have to do all of this ISINTEG and ESEutil business...

But that's par for the course.

Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet

 

[N0ktar]

A while back, I used to work for MS traning center in AZ and we used to ghost NT, win2K, win98 just fine but we never ghosted exchange. Exchange instructors said don't do it and they were right, it is really not a good idea, it is also a far to important piece of software to rely on ghosted installation. It is better to reinstall the server and restore its databse than troublshoot ghosting issues (often permanently).

 

[Alshrim]

ya.. in the end.. the only thing your avoiding is installing Exchange .. and how long does that take?? 5 minutes??

The end result, if disaster happens, is still a full recovery procedure.

Alshrim
System Administrator
MCSE, MCP+Internet