Old ES died - Need to replace it - What to look for?

[southbeach]

OK - After a slow and painful week, my exchange server took a dive and crashed all together. I have no idea whatever killed it but all I can say is that OS cannot find HD even when using DELL's utilities to restore RAID Controller drivers.

After spending all day trying to win a race while riding on a dead horse, I am looking to go in to work and setup a new server. A friend of mine advised about needing to remove all reference of the old server from my ADS servers.

He kindly directed me to this link

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Remove-Exchange-server-entire-Exchange-organization.html

One thing confuses me, it seems to me that the article bases this on removing exchange from a server that will
a) stay online
b) a new exchange will be installed

In my case, I am setting up a totally new server. I do want to use the same server name as the original and I think this is the one reason why I have to clean up my ADS servers. Aside from the suggestions on the above linked article, I wonder of any other advise you guys/gals can offer.

Thanks!

 

[paulha]

IMO you would be better using the disaster recovery switch route. I have done it in a production environment, it is pretty straightforward and painless. (more or less!)

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials...er-Server-Using-Disaster-Recovery-Switch.html

 

[Zelandakh]

Don't use the first link, use Paul's link. You don't want to remove Exchange, you want to get it working...

 

[southbeach]

OK, here is where I stand right now ...

1) I am installing the W2K3 Std R2 X32
2) Chose to leave D: alone since all of my exchange is there
3) Formatting C: (this is what I am doing right now)

I intend to install the OS and expect to find my D: intact.

Of course, I will then follow suggested link

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials...er-Server-Using-Disaster-Recovery-Switch.html

to install Exchange and clean up ADS.

What I wonder is:

1) Does it make a difference given my situation
2) Since my data is in D:, I guess I do not need to worry about restoring (provided that D: is really intact)

Regards,

 

[Zelandakh]

1) Does what make a difference?
2) Before installing Exchange app to the same place as before, I'd take a copy of it the data first.

Do you need to restore? Well in theory no as Exchange should see the store/s and the log files, mount everything and play through. If it doesn't but you've kept everything, you can restore from backup and play through anyway, either way you restore back to the point it went pear shaped.

 

[southbeach]

Zelandakh,

I installed exchange server and it made a copy of my origional version. It kept it under exchsvr_old.

I guess that what I am trying to ask is I could simply copy the data and log files to their normal directories under the new installation tree (which is same as the very original installation)?

Regards,

 

[Zelandakh]

Sounds like a good plan so far.

 

[Zelandakh]

ok, you seem to be spamming multiple threads about this - try to stick in here.

What is the latest state of play?

 

[southbeach]

Was not able to get exchange going and keep what I had on D drive so ended up zapping the entire system and did a totally fresh install.

It took me 5 hours to do this ... I spent 3 days trying to clean and recover and in the end, I had to do what I was so hardily avoiding.

Now dealing with the inbound calls and help desk tickets to reset every user's outlook profiles.

Regards,