Exchange 2013 - Total Loss - Rebuild

Question

My site has two exchange 2013 Servers. One of these looks to be a total loss due to a storage area network failure.

This server does have ntbackup of both the mail datastores (x2) and the server itself.

Can anyone advise on the best strategy to get a server up and running with the mailboxes operational?

i.e do I attempt to fully recreate the existing server with the old server name or do I build a completely new exchange server and then try and restore to databases and then presumably somehow tell exchange that the user mailboxes are in a different location?

Answer 1

I would do a recoverserver since the object still exists in AD I assume - then restore the Exch DBs

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/high-availability/disaster-recovery/recover-exchange-servers?view=exchserver-2019

You could also move to another server if a new one already exists, and you could restore Exch DBs
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/high-availability/disaster-recovery/database-portability?view=exchserver-2019

Of the two, one is preferred, but the second is an option if the first one were not to work :)

Answer 2

Hi @Ian Wilson ,

You can try Setup.exe /Mode:RecoverServer if the Exchange data didn’t loss, then restore databases: Restoring Exchange 2013 databases.
If that didn’t help, then you could consider create a new server and move the database to the new server like Andy provided.

I’m not sure if you’re using NTbackup or Windows Server Backup for those servers since NTbackup was disabled from Windows Server 2003, but I think you could use them to do the recovery if you have backed up Exchange server and databases correctly.
Windows Server Backup: Use Windows Server Backup to restore a backup of Exchange.

Bests,
Lou

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