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Moving Exchange 2000 to new box. 1

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jjjax

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Sep 25, 2002
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We want to move our exchange 2000, sp 3 running on windows 2000 to a completly new server but keep existing name and so just basically replace that server with a faster machine and harddrives. What are the steps required?

Thanks,
Joe
 
I'm going to do the same thing sometime this fall. Post back here when you've done it to let us know how it turned out.

Thanks.
 
Thanks, I will probably attempt next weekend and post the outcome.
 
Just to point out also that you should really check out the FAQ sectoin as well as utilize the Search function (when they get it going again, but it should have been working when you originally posted):


I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.
 
I haven't gotten to it yet, maybe this weekend.
 
Sorry, didn't do it yet. Too many other things came up and I want to make sure I have the time to recover if need be but I'm thinking next weekend. I will definitely post a message to say how it worked out.
 
Starting to prepare to do it this weekend. It doesn't mention having to do the forest and domain preps so I assume they don't need to be done since it will be in the same domain?
 
Well...I finally did it but not without a few problems. The Microsoft knowledge base article left a few steps out or maybe they are assumed steps that I was unware of. So...to the person who questioned why I posted this question when it is under faq, I did it because part of the reason for sites like tek tips is so that you can get real life expierences and ask questions because I'm sure as we all know, things don't always work according to instructions. I'll list the steps I did along with the problems I encountered. I had first tried the step by step instructions from ms article mentioned in faq but knew there was a problem when I ran exchange 2000 setup with the /disasterrecovery option and while it came up with the correct setup stating it was disaster recover mode but ran in about 10 seconds and didn't seem to install anything. So, after searching the net for some more info, I did the following.

1. I did a backup of exchange databases.
2. I shutdown all exchange services and did a full system backup. (not mentioned in ms article as being needed but did it anyway and it payed off later).
3. Did a system state bu. (also, not mentioned)
4. Shutdown old server.
5. Renamed new server to old server name and changed i/p address to that of old server. Already had loaded windows 2000 and same service pack and all services needed earlier. Had to rejoin domain.
6. After reboot, I did full restore of everything. (not mentioned in ms article) I did the restore using veritas backup exec and it had told me to restart to finish because of open files and after doing so, the server just hung at starting windows message.
7. Rebooted in safe mode
8. Did system state restore. (not mentioned in ms article) Not sure if it would have been better to not reboot after full restore and just do system state first which might have eliminated having to go into safe mode. This worked great because it reloaded all the iis information and all other program information for things like outlook and our spam stuff and so on. I never did this before but worked great without having to really reconfigure anything.
9. After system state restore, it came up with a few found new hardware messages because new box has diiferent hardware so I had to configure network card and a couple of things. Also, had to rejoing domain after restarting again.
10. Ran exchange 2000 setup with /disasterrecovery option and worked much better this time. It prompted me a lot for overwriting newer files with older ones because I had restored everything so it had exchange sp3 files. I said yes to overwrite because I have to load sp3 next.
11. Ran exchange sp3 update with /disaster recovery option and worked fine.
12. Restored exchange databases fine.
13. Now the scary part... tried to mount public and private stores and giving me unable to mount errors. A few ms articles on the error dealt mostly with security but it wasn't that. Found one mentioning running eseutil to check databases. Did so and they had a state=dirty which from what I read might have to do with log file problems.
14. Ran eseutil with /p to repair both private and public databases.
15. Ran eseutil with /r to recover both private and public databases.
16. Mounted both stores fine.

Probably would have been a real easy thing if there were some more specific instructions so I hope this helps someone else. Thanks, Joe
 
You probably did several steps that weren't mentioned because they really weren't necessary. You're not trying to restore the enitire server state to the new hardware, but rather the Exchange system.

You could have brought the new server online without restoring the OS from backup of the old server. What you were really concerned with was restoring Exchange to it's previous state, not the OS.

In the end, you achieved what you wanted. But I've done a DR test following the procedure supplied by MS to different hardware and it worked exactly as described, no extra steps necessary.

I'm Certifiable, not certified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.
 
I'm curious because I did it that way first and when I did the dr option, it only said 11 mb being installed and it didn't really seem to install anything, no folders were created, no shortcuts, etc. I know it gets some of it's information from ad but I can't see how it would be able to know any of the previous installation configuration information let alone iis and other information. To do it the was the ms article says, do you have to restore anything before doing the dr option? I can't see how you can't? Anyway, like you said, it's working now but I'd be interested in knowing how other people made out. I would recommend that people do the full restore and the system state restore because if you have made changes to the configuration or have other things on that computer that interact with exchange of even if they don't, it will make it a lot easier. Also, check out this link because while it's a little repetitive, it might help expalin some things better for people, like me, who don't do this too often.


Thanks,
Joe
 
I am getting ready to go through this whole process as well and I just want to confirm what Lander215 stated, where MS says to do a full backup, just the Storage Group, not system state, and would this be an online backup, since the next step states, "take the existing server offline."

Thanks to both of you, I am hoping I learn from all of your preliminary efforts. Marmar49
 
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