Also for a quick sanity check before kicking off the restore I had checked the database tab on all the stores, just to check 'this database can be overwritten by a restore' was not checked.

For an older Exchange restore (Exchange 5.5) you would need a temporary server to rebuild to replicate your old 5.5 environment.

Starting up

1.    Recall the tape!
2.    Inventory the drive and catalog the tape. Note the mailbox store name that contains your target mailbox.
3.    On the server you are using for recovery, create the recovery storage group (this can have any name, just ensure there is enough disk space for the database files where you create it)
4.    Say for example the store you need to recover is called “Mailbox Store 1 (SVHEXBETEMP01)”. Obviously when you right click on the RSG and select “add database to recover”, this database will not be in the list. To get around this, you have to create a new mailbox store that has this name. You can do this on any server in your org. The name has to match exactly with the store you are recovering.
5.    Now right click on the RSG and select ‘add database to recover’ and add the new store.
6.    Go back to Backup Exec. Click Restore -  new restore job (not by wizard)
7.    Change beginning backup date as required.
8.    View by resource, and drill down to the required store
9.    Under Microsoft Exchange Redirection, check ‘Redirect Exchange sets’. Enter the server name to redirect to
10.    Under Microsoft Exchange, select ‘Restore all transaction logs until point-in-time; skip transaction logs after this time’
11.    Change path for storage of temporary files to a volume that has plenty of free space.
12.    Uncheck mount database after restore.
13.    Run now!

Restoring the mailbox

1.    If the mailbox you are restoring still exists in your org, migrate the mailbox to your new store (e.g. “Mailbox Store 1 (SVHEXBETEMP01)”)
2.    If they mailbox does not exist, create one with the same name in this store.
3.    In the RSG, right click on the target mailbox and use the recovery option. Select the target (you probably will not be able top modify this option)
4.    Copy option is safer than Merge.
5.    Now you can use ExMerge to extract the PST, or just tell the user their data has been recovered.

Cleaning up

1.    Migrate the user back to their original location.
2.    Delete the temporary mailbox store.
3.    Delete the recovered mailbox store and recovery storage group.
4.    Delete the database files from disk.

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/origi...
http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Imp...

However when I tried this way I kept getting IP address conflicts. This is how I did it instead:

• Configure OWA on both front end servers with the same certificate
• Make sure Exchange patches are consistent on both cluster nodes
• Create DNS A record for cluster IP address
• If either server is created from an image (or vmware template), remove and reinstall network cards as per KB828258

I then configured the cluster (including IP configuration on each node) using Network Load Balancing Manager from my workstation. If you use this tool to create clusters, you have to do it remotely as the cluster IP will have the same MAC Address across all nodes, and as this is configured it breaks the connectivity between the nodes.

• Open Network Load Balancing Manager (Start - Administrative Tools - NLB Manager)
• Cluster - New
• Enter cluster IP address, subnet mask, and the DNS name you created earlier
• Select Unicast mode, leave 'Enable remote control' unticked
• Do not enter additional IP addresses or Port rules
• On final step, add the server that will become the first node in the cluster

When you click on Finish, NLB Manager will configure the NLB protocol and add the cluster IP address to the node. If this is successful you can then add further nodes by right-clicking the cluster name and selecting "Add node to cluster". You will notice that the NLB Manager automatically changes the priority of the new node as it is being added.

Windows 2003 NLB Manager

Final step is to then open IIS Manager on each cluster node and bind the cluster IP address to the OWA website.

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2003, Network Load Balancing, NLB, Clustering

Here's a few notable links so far:

• Exchange Server 2007 Processor and Memory Recommendations
  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/...
• Exchange Server 2007 technical documentation
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124558.aspx
• Guidance on Active Directory design for Exchange Server 2007
  http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/03/28/437313.aspx
• Active Directory Performance for 64-bit Versions of Windows Server 2003
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...
• Transitioning from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 (useful but a bit brief in places)
  http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/...
• Exchange Best Practice Analyser (includes Exchange 2007 readyness check)
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/2003/bb288481.aspx
• Discussion on Exchange 2007 and Public Folders
  http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/02/20/419994.aspx
• Discussion on Exchange 2007 and Blackberry Enterprise Server
  http://www.blackberryforums.com/bes-admin-...

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2007, E12

So, here are some handy Exchange 2003 hints for the day:

First, how to enable to the security tab when viewing the properties of the organisation in ESM. It's something I've needed to do from time to time, when the 'delegate control' wizard is not quite refined enough:

• Use Registry Editor to find this key in the registry:
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\EXAdmin
• Add a DWord Value, with the name ShowSecurityPage and a value of 1
• Quit Registry Editor
• Restart ESM

Enable Security tab for organisation object in ESM

Second tip for the day - when working with public folder permissions, if you hold down the CTRL key while clicking on the "Client Permissions" button, it will bring up a traditional security dialog box rather than the usual folder permissions box. You can then use this to view Advanced security permissions, and be more explicit when setting the permissions for the folder.

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2003, Public Folder permissions, ESM

So, if you find yourself in a situation where you want to move the contents of a 10Gb mailbox to a another mailbox, and you don't have any tools such as Mail Attender for Exchange that can do it for you, you have to run ExMerge several times using date ranges to ensure the PST's don't exceed the 2Gb limit.

In my particular situation, I have a folder in a mailbox containing 300,000 items that I want to move to a journal mailbox to be picked up by a mail archiving system. I can't move them across manually using Outlook, because it fails when you drag and drop more than 2000 items, and trying to navigate around such a massive mailbox anyway is too slow to mention.

One of the vb experts here helped me write a macro to complete this task. It can be run from the Visual Basic Editor in Outlook. To run it use Tools - Macros - Visual Basic Editor, and click Yes to enable macros. Modify the code below so that Mailbox 1 and Mailbox 2 match the names of the mailboxes you are working on. Mailbox 1 is the source mailbox, and Mailbox 2 is the destination. You must then open both of these mailboxes in your Oulook profile before you start the macro.

Sub move_messages()

Dim objExch2003 As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objErrors As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objJournal As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objJournalInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, intcount As Integer, i As Integer, objMailItem As Object
Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set objExch2003 = objNS.Folders("Mailbox - Mailbox 1")
Set objJournal = objNS.Folders("Mailbox - Mailbox 2")
Set objInbox = objExch2003.Folders("Inbox")
Set objJournalInbox = objJournal.Folders("Inbox")
Set objErrors = objInbox.Folders("Errors")

Do While objErrors.Items.Count > 0

For i = 100 To 1 Step -1
Set objMailItem = objErrors.Items(i)
objMailItem.Move objJournalInbox
Next

Loop

End Sub

After you start it your Outlook will appear to crash - this is normal and it is really working in the background. You can use ESM to watch the number of items decrease in Mailbox 1 and increase in Mailbox 2.

Technorati Tags: Outlook 2003, PST, Macros, ExMerge, Exchange 2003, Exchange Administration

You cannot delete this public folder store because it contains folder replicas. To avoid data loss, right click the public folder store and use Move All Replicas to move the replicas to a different server. It may take several hours until the content is replicated to the new server and the local replicas are removed.

Of course using the 'move all replicas' option does nothing to relieve you from this message, if your public store is empty.

To cleanly remove the store (i.e. without using adsiedit) you first need to remove 2 system generated public folders inside the store. If you expand your public folder store and click on Public Folder Instances, you will see the folders you need to remove in there - globalevents and OWAScratchPad, but, you can't remove them from this part of the interface. You will need to expand the Folder tree at the bottom of your Administrative Group and View System Folders. Right-click on the top level of the tree and "Connect to..." the server with the public store you want to delete. Find and examine the globalevents folder.

Now, you need to be extremely careful that you have the correct system folders here, because each public store contains system folders with these names. To be sure you have the right one, check the path and it should be something like:

/NON_IPM_SUBTREE/StoreEvents{BHH7CC57-934F-4CD9-ACC5-A8BC080A1423}/globalevents/

Go back to your 'public folder instances' view on the public store from earlier and check the folder properties. If the path matches this name EXACTLY, it is the right system folder and therefore OK to delete. Follow the same procedure for the OWAScratchPad folder and you should see the remaining system folders vanish, and then you can remove the store. Voila!

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2003, Public Folders, Exchange Admin

Not very pretty eh ... Going directly through the back-end though, it worked perfectly.

After some more investigation and following a hunch, I moved my mailbox to a test server (where my mailbox worked through OWA) and started looking at Windows updates that were available for the test server, that were already installed on the new server. Through some testing I eventually found that if KB911829 is installed on the back-end but not the front-end, it will break OWA for users on that server. The fix is simple - remove the patch, or update all the Exchange servers with the same patches.

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2003, KB911829, Exchange Admin, OWA

Event 1221 in the application log will show how much white space exists in your exchange databases. This appears once per mailbox store at the end of the online maintenance period:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store
Event Category: General
Event ID: 1221
Date: 08/08/2006
Time: 06:00:02
User: N/A
Computer: S05010025
Description:
The database "1st Storage Group\Mailbox Store (S05010025)" has 39368 megabytes of free space after online defragmentation has terminated.

Personally I would not worry about a few gigs of white space as it will be reclaimed fairly quickly. As WAN and Broadband links become stronger, Exchange is more abused as a method of sending and storing large files. 40Gb of free space (as above) is worth reclaiming though. Bringing the database size down by 40Gb will significantly reduce the backup, and more importantly, restore times, and reduce the number of tapes used from week to week (and therefore the overall cost of Exchange to your company). There are a few other instances where you might carry out an offline defrag:

• When your mailbox indexing is completely hosed
• If your disks are extremely fragmented, and your server is too busy during the online defrag period to make much difference.

In my last company, users were using public folder trees as a ‘check in, check out’ document management system. This caused very heavy fragmentation of the database until we moved the folder trees to their own server which had more spindles.

Before launching an offline defrag, make sure you have a good backup of your store. Also ensure you have enough free space on your drive (110% of the size of your store). Then dismount it (there is no need to stop the information store service), and open a command prompt window to issue the commands:

eseutil /d e:\path\to\priv1.edb /s e:\path\to\priv1.stm

Note: by default it will create temp files on your C: drive and these could potentially get very large. If you don't have a large C: drive, use the /t and /f switches to specify the locations for your temporary files.

eseutil /d e:\path\to\priv1.edb /s e:\path\to\priv1.stm /t F:\temp\temp.edb /f F:\temp\temp.stm

You should see something like this:

Microsoft(R) Exchange Server Database Utilities
Version 6.5
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Initiating DEFRAGMENTATION mode...
Database: priv1.edb
Streaming File: priv1.stm
Temp. Database: TEMPDFRG3940.EDB
Temp. Streaming File: TEMPDFRG3940.STM

Defragmentation Status (% complete)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
.................

Remember to mount your store again once the defrag has finished. If it has worked you should see a message like this one:

Moving 'TEMPDFRG3940.EDB' to 'priv1.edb'... DONE!

Moving 'TEMPDFRG3940.STM' to 'priv1.stm'... DONE!

Note:
It is recommended that you immediately perform a full backup
of this database. If you restore a backup made before the
defragmentation, the database will be rolled back to the state
it was in at the time of that backup.

Operation completed successfully in 5210.484 seconds.

In this instance it took 1 hour and 26 minutes to defrag a 23Gb database file.

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2003, Exchange Admin

ID no: c1034ad6
The operation cannot be performed because this mailbox was already reconnected to an existing user.

Here are some of your options:

Try migrating the mailbox again to the same destination. Exchange should know the orphan exists from a failed mailbox move and will automatically purge it, and attempt the move again. This does not always not work though.

Another alternative, is use ESM to have a look at the mailbox store properties on the store with the disconnected mailbox. On the Limits tab, do you have a check mark next to "Do not permanently delete mailboxes and items until the store has been backed up"? If you do, try backing up the store and purging the mailbox again.

Here's the final option (which worked for me) if all else fails, and you should ensure you have a recent backup of your stores before doing this. Using ADUC, find the other mailbox in your organisation that has the same display name as your disconnected mailbox. Right click on the user and use the Exchange tasks wizard to delete the mailbox from that user. Now go back into ESM and run the cleanup agent on your stores, and both mailboxes will be in a disconnected state. You will then be able to purge the orphan you want to get rid of. Next you should simply be able to right-click on the remaining orphan mailbox in ESM and use the 'reconnect' option, and specify the user account the orphan belongs to.

Edit: One more method as suggested below is setting the "Keep deleted mailboxes" option to 0 days and then running the cleanup agent on that mailbox store. Judging by more recent comments this seems to do the trick. Thanks Mike!

Technorati Tags: Exchange 2003, Exchange Admin