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Exchange 2003/2007 Failure Issue - 26.Oct.2011 10:56:42 AM

GSpin

Posts: 2
Joined: 26.Oct.2011
Status: offline

Good Morning,

Had a semi-critical issue that has been looming for awhile now that I was hoping someone could help with.

We've been running Exchange 2007 since it first came out and all is well, unfortunately we also had an older Exchange 2003 box we kept around for restoration purposes. The Exchange 2003 box was the first and the last box to be in the domain (all others are 2007). A few months ago it suffered an unrecoverable failure and we were not able to restore it. This posed a problem as A) it was a domain controller (which I realize was a mistake) and B) It was the last 2003 box in the domain.

I managed to forcefully remove the DC portion of it from Active Directory however the Exchange portion is still lingering. It doesn't seem to be kicking out errors in the 2007 boxes, but it is still referenced in the Best practices analyzer, management tools, etc.

I realize that this box was very important to properly remove the final Exchange 2003 components from the topology but now that it is dead I don't have that option. Can anybody give some pointers on how to get out of this mess? Thank you.

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RE: Exchange 2003/2007 Failure Issue - 26.Oct.2011 1:52:11 PM

de.blackman

Posts: 3542
Joined: 4.Apr.2005
From: Toronto, Canada
Status: offline

Since it is still in AD as an exchange server, can you rebuild a new server with the same name and same HD configuration and run Exchange setup with the disaster recovery switch so as to recreate this server in AD. Doing this will let you properly remove the server from the domain as opposed to having issues yrs down the road!

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Ibrahim Benna - Microsoft Exchange MVP
Forum Moderator
Navantis
@IbrahimBenna

(in reply to GSpin)

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RE: Exchange 2003/2007 Failure Issue - 26.Oct.2011 2:55:22 PM

GSpin

Posts: 2
Joined: 26.Oct.2011
Status: offline

Thanks for the quick reply! That is something I'm willing to try, however because it was a while ago I may not have access to any old database or log files. At the time of the crash it didn't have any mailboxes on it so I'm not worries about data loss. Do you still think I'd be able to proceed with a rebuild on a similar server (with no data) and try to remove it correctly from the domain?

(in reply to de.blackman)

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RE: Exchange 2003/2007 Failure Issue - 27.Oct.2011 10:48:21 AM

de.blackman

Posts: 3542
Joined: 4.Apr.2005
From: Toronto, Canada
Status: offline

The mail data is not my concern since you can always mount up a blank mailbox database. It is the free\busy information and OAB (stuff in the public folder database). Do you have any copy of the old PF database?

_____________________________

Ibrahim Benna - Microsoft Exchange MVP
Forum Moderator
Navantis
@IbrahimBenna

(in reply to GSpin)

Post #: 4