asked on

Recover SBS 2003 to new hardware from BKF

Does anyone have a guide on how to best recover SBS 2003 to new hardware from a BKF backup?

The motherboard in a very old SBS box has gone pop and we can't get a like for like replacement. We can only get one with a diff chipset, controller, processor...oh and ram....and HD type....brilliant !

Just restoring the system state is gonna cause all kinds of blue screens.

Anyone know of a good guide on how best to handle this? It's not a large SBS install so I thought about just reinstalling SBS on the "new" hardware with the same name and domain, setting up AD and adding the users by hand (only 8 of them) then trying to get the EDBs moved over (that's where my plan falls apart).

Any suggestions/comments?

Olly

SOLUTION

Hypercat (Deb)

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Rob Williams

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

stonneway

ASKER

Thanks for the advice. I'll check back tomorrow. Alas the workstations use OWA not Outlook so we have no rough and ready access to the PSTs/OSTs or a cached working outlook from which to export email.

As we didn't set up the backup job on this server we don't know what was included, but as far as the users know it's just the file shares, System State and Exchange.

I'll let you know how it goes.

ta

Rob Williams

If no cached e-mail you can use Exmerge, though it doesn't like mailboxes over 2GB:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2004/11/25/20803.aspx

stonneway

ASKER

you can only use exmerge on a live exchange server though cant you ? It's been a while since i used but i dont think you can use it on just the edb. If you could then that would be ideal, and we had a live exchange server I woudnt need to restore :)

SOLUTION

Hypercat (Deb)

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Rob Williams

Sorry thought you could restore to recoveray storage group and use exmerge.

Hypercat (Deb)

Rob, you're correct, you can do that. I don't think the OP understood what you were saying, and I am getting confused about whether he/she has a backup of the Exchange DB or just a copy of the .edb file. But just to be clear, in theory at least, if you restore to a recovery storage group then you should be able to use Exmerge to export the mailbox contents and then re-import it into the live (new, empty) mailboxes. This is all done on the NEW server. The article I referenced above walks you through this entire process.

Rob Williams

Thanks hypercat. I missed the earlier comment; "then trying to get the EDBs moved over " and based my comment on; "as far as the users know it's just the file shares, System State and Exchange." and I assumed Exchange meant full backup.
I like your suggestion of the ontrack solution, though I haven't used it I have heard it works extremely well and eliminates the 2GB limit hassles.

Hypercat (Deb)

Yes, I like Ontrack a lot myself. You can recover mailboxes or even individual emails from an .edb file directly to a live Exchange database or export it to a .PST. You can also use Ontrack as a search engine to find specific emailsor other data within a particular mailbox or the entire information store. It's made my pretty a$$ look even better lots of times ;-)

Rob Williams

I didn't realize it could be used as a "search engine". That could be very useful.

stonneway

ASKER

Hi chaps.

Thanks for the info. At the moment we dont know what's in the backup. The users have said that they backup "exchange" which I'm taking to mean a proper backup of the exchange node via NTBACKUP. It could also mean just a backup of the Exchange folder however, I just don't know.

Either way I think you confirmed our plan of action. Thanks very much.

Olly

Rob Williams

Good luck with it.
--Rob