No database on the second Exchange Server

Question

Hello!

After installing the second Exchange Server 2019 CU12 (no issues during installations) I was greatly surprised to see the newly-installed server does not have any mailbox database - I mean there always was a default database on each MB server installed and I remember I had posted the question here on MS forum regarding what is the best practice with this database on second (third..._ Exchange servers.

Maybe I'm missing something here and this behaviour is now by design???

Regards,
Michael

Answer 1

Hi @Mikhail Firsov ,

In the installation of the second EXCH you provide:

We can see that in your second Exchange installation, although the paths are different, the names of the databases are all DB01. I think that is the problem.
Database names should be unique in Exchange and using the same database name is not recommended.

In my installation tests, if I used MdbName to specify the same database name (DB01), the results were the same as yours.

If I use MdbName to specify a different database name (DB02 and DB02S), I will get the following normal results:

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Answer 2

Hi LiLyLi2-MSFT,

"It is recommended that you sign in to the EAC to check if this server has a default mailbox database":

Both Exchange Servers are 2019 installed on Windows Server 2022.

"what would be the result if you used Get-MailboxDatabase directly?" - sorry, didn't get it: what does mean "directly"? I've posted the result of the Get-MailboxDatabase -Server EXCH2 above and that command was issued on EXCH2. Ommiting "-Server EXCH2" leads to the single output - "DB01 on EXCH1", exactly as in EAC.

Regards,
Michael

Answer 3

Check these helpful links - https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2278922-installing-new-exchange-server-2019-on-the-same-network-having-old-exchange-2016

https://www.alitajran.com/install-second-exchange-server-in-domain/

Answer 4

Hi imamitsingh,

Thank yor for the reply!

Unfortunately these links don't have the answer to my question.

Roughly six months earlier I deployed two Exchange Servers CU11 and there was a default database on the second CU11 server - now I've taken exactly the same steps with CU12 but there's no default db on the second server... ???

Answer 5

Hi LiLyLi2-MSFT,

Thank you for the reply!

Installation of EXCH1:

.\Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataON /Mode:Install /Roles:Mailbox /on:"TestENTERPRISE" /EnableErrorReporting /TargetDir:"C:\EXCHANGE" /MdbName:"DB01" /DbFilePath:"C:\EXCHANGE\DATABASES\DB01\DB01.edb" /LogFolderPath:"C:\EXCHANGE\DATABASES\DB01"

Installation of EXCH2:

.\Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataON /Mode:Install /Roles:Mailbox /on:"TestENTERPRISE" /EnableErrorReporting /TargetDir:"C:\EXCHANGE" /MdbName:"DB01" /DbFilePath:"C:\EXCHANGE\DATABASES\DB01S\DB01S.edb" /LogFolderPath:"C:\EXCHANGE\DATABASES\DB01S"

There's only one database on EXCH2 - DB01 - that's being replicated from EXCH1:

By the way, there's one more strange thing in this installation: as you see from above commands I prefer placing DB and log files to C:\EXCHANGE\DATABASES[ ] folder and I have never had any problems with that (I had been using the exact same commands recently when I was installing CU11), but this time the location of log files hasn't changed:

P.S. EXCH2 is up and running flawlessly!