Idea to recover from botched EX2003 install?

[SCLDTony]

Folks,

After a couple months of testing, I am planning on moving forward with the installation of Exchange 2003 into our live environment. Currently, we are running Gordano NT mail and are not migrating any data or user accounts to Exchange. This is a fresh, new install of one Exchange 2003 server into a 10 site, 200 user Server 2003 AD environment.

Does anyone see an issue with this scenario from recovering from a botched (I hope not, but you never know) Exchange install:

1. Power off all other AD severs in the domain. There are a total of 5 AD servers. The only one I want turned on during this install is the master.

2. Make an image of the domain master server.

3. Install Exchange and hope that it all goes well.

4. If it does not go well, restore the image to the domain master server.

5. If it all goes well, bring up the other AD servers one by one for replication.

The reason I am asking is that I tested a botched install scenario on my test domain (which only has one Active Directory server) and since the Exchange server was the last (and only) Exchange server in the domain, it would not let me remove it. Basically, I am giving myself a full Sunday (no staff here then) to get this server up and running, and in the event that I screw it up, I want to be able to remove the server, turn the Gordano server back on and get everything back to normal.

Does this make sense or do I sound insane? Thanks in advance!

Tony

 

[tekn0crat]

HI never seeen a botched fresh install but if you follow the steps forrest prep(forrest root), domain prep (on all domains which will have mailboxes), install exchange with the same account you use to forrest prep. It should go well. You can manually remove exchange from ad using adsiedit but the schema change is permanent. You can also open a ticket with Microsoft prior to upgrade to make sure an engineer is available to assist if needed. Also make sure you run netdiag and dcdiag before installing. If it is all 2003 just take system state backups of all domain controllers prior to begining. Images are a bit of an overkill and will screw up ad replication if you restore from an image. It is much better to do an authoritative restore of ad.

Exchange and AD are closely intergrated you need to know which servers hold your FSMO roles.

All domain controllers should be online during the exchange install

Read the deployment guide before Sunday

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...19-C7B3-42D1-8FBB-FE6339FFA1ED&displaylang=en

Ben A
MCSE 2000:Security
MCSE 2003