<div>
Yes, you never test anything in production environment instead build another exchange server and test it.
</div>


Yes, you never test anything in production environment instead build another exchange server and test it.

<div>
<div class="content wysiwyg-content">
I have a copy of a mailbox store. The exchange 2003 server's mailbox store is still working fine and I would like to mount the copy of the mailbox store to practice exporting mail from the copy in case someone ever requests restore of parts of their mailbox.<br />
Can I mount this mailbox store, create a user account and connect the user account to a mailbox, and not worry about corrupting the working mailbox store and working user accounts - or do I have to install a non-production server, restore the system state, and then mount the data store? I am hoping I can skip creating a second server. I am hoping that the copy mailbox store will not have the same path as the working mailbox store so it shouldn't be confused with the working mailbox store.
</div>
</div>


I have a copy of a mailbox store. The exchange 2003 server's mailbox store is still working fine and I would like to mount the copy of the mailbox store to practice exporting mail from the copy in case someone ever requests restore of parts of their mailbox.
Can I mount this mailbox store, create a user account and connect the user account to a mailbox, and not worry about corrupting the working mailbox store and working user accounts - or do I have to install a non-production server, restore the system state, and then mount the data store? I am hoping I can skip creating a second server. I am hoping that the copy mailbox store will not have the same path as the working mailbox store so it shouldn't be confused with the working mailbox store.

Opening exchange mailbox store.

Exchange is the server side of a collaborative application product that is part of the Microsoft Server infrastructure. Exchange's major features include email, calendaring, contacts and tasks, support for mobile and web-based access to information, and support for data storage.

Exchange

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. Although often used mainly as an email application, it also includes a calendar, task manager, contact manager, note-taker, journal, and web browser.

Outlook

Windows Server 2003 was based on Windows XP and was released in four editions: Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. It also had derivative versions for clusters, storage and Microsoft’s Small Business Server. Important upgrades included integrating Internet Information Services (IIS), improvements to Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP), and the migration to Automated System Recovery (ASR).