snyderkv
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Exchange Rehoming mailbox?
EE,
We had a corrupt mailbox database on exchange 2003 so we did a repair. After the repair completed we mounted the database on a new server and within the same admin group and store name. Now because we recreated the mailboxes for users instead of creating a dial tone, we cannot use the RSG recovery tool to merge the mailbox I think because the MSExchangeHomeServer attribute still points to the old server. In any case, ESM tries to merge the mailbox data to the old server.
I saw instructions for rehoming the MsExchHomeServer and two other attributes however, I'm not sure if this script is correct for what we are doing. Is their any ways we can merge the repaired data without having to use the rehome script? I'm cool with it as long as we don't have an easier altrnative.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996939(EXCHG.65).aspx
Thanks in advance.
We had a corrupt mailbox database on exchange 2003 so we did a repair. After the repair completed we mounted the database on a new server and within the same admin group and store name. Now because we recreated the mailboxes for users instead of creating a dial tone, we cannot use the RSG recovery tool to merge the mailbox I think because the MSExchangeHomeServer attribute still points to the old server. In any case, ESM tries to merge the mailbox data to the old server.
I saw instructions for rehoming the MsExchHomeServer and two other attributes however, I'm not sure if this script is correct for what we are doing. Is their any ways we can merge the repaired data without having to use the rehome script? I'm cool with it as long as we don't have an easier altrnative.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996939(EXCHG.65).aspx
Thanks in advance.
from the recovery storage group
ASKER
From the article: I think exmerge is only good for recovering to original mailboxes aka dial tone. If I had dial tones I could easily use the built in exchange tasks to recover and merge the mail. Exmerge will not merge to mailboxes with a different GUID.
"This version of ExMerge can match a disconnected mailbox in a recovery storage group database with the original mailbox and user account still present elsewhere in the system"
What do you suggest?
"This version of ExMerge can match a disconnected mailbox in a recovery storage group database with the original mailbox and user account still present elsewhere in the system"
What do you suggest?
A recreated mailbox retains some historical data about the last user account connected to it.
If you re-home a mailbox by changing only the homeMDB, homeMTA, and msExchHomeServer attributes on a user account, then the msExchMailboxGUID attribute will remain intact.
This would have happened as you restored the exchange server and recreated mailboxes on new system
The Mailbox Recovery Center reads the AD data and looks for user accounts in Active Directory that match it. The msExchMailboxGUID wouldn't have changed even if the mailbox is new.
Recovery Storage groups should still work
If you re-home a mailbox by changing only the homeMDB, homeMTA, and msExchHomeServer attributes on a user account, then the msExchMailboxGUID attribute will remain intact.
This would have happened as you restored the exchange server and recreated mailboxes on new system
The Mailbox Recovery Center reads the AD data and looks for user accounts in Active Directory that match it. The msExchMailboxGUID wouldn't have changed even if the mailbox is new.
Recovery Storage groups should still work
That is as long as you didn't "Remove Exchange Attributes"
ASKER
About removing exchange attributes. They deleted the mailboxes and recreated new ones. Right click user | Exchange Tasks | Delete Mailbox.
I will try and compare the GUID's however, even when using exmerge to export the RSG to PST, I get mailbox GUID errors. The RSG Recover mailbox fails as well for the path it's trying to recover to is the old server.
Trackin?
I will try and compare the GUID's however, even when using exmerge to export the RSG to PST, I get mailbox GUID errors. The RSG Recover mailbox fails as well for the path it's trying to recover to is the old server.
Trackin?
ASKER
Seems as thought the GUIDs are infact different. Probably why native tools don't work. Rehoming is not the answer because that is for when you manually move databases and need to update the users active directory attributes to reflect the new location. This is different where the GUIDs are not the due to the lack of a dial tone, therfore the native tools won't work at merging the historical data back into the new mailboxes.
Anyone know of a good way to get this old repaired data back into the new database?
Anyone know of a good way to get this old repaired data back into the new database?
You might want to consider either investing in something like Ontrack Powercontrols, which will read the raw mdb data and export to mailboxes or pst, or you could create temporary users, set the msExchMailboxGUID to that of the mailbox you want to restore and merge the two users data.
Depends on how many users/time you have
Depends on how many users/time you have
ASKER
Could I possibly export the current database to PST then disconnect the mailboxes, then mount the RSG database into the live store and mount that in the Recovery Center, do a find match, then reconnect and merge the new PST's back in?
Does this make sense?
Does this make sense?
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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998516(EXCHG.65).aspx