How can I move (recreate) mailboxes out of an unmountable Exchange (svr19) database?

Question

Database is gone but Exchange insists on not letting it go despite being unmountable and unrepairable.

I tried tons of PowerShell command to move users out of it to a new database but I can't make it work. There are some switches for the New-MailboxRelocationRequest cmdlet that look promising; -AccceptLargeDataLoss, -ForceOffline and -Skip...moving or something similar, but it has no documentation not I can find it anywhere.

In any case I tried it a million different ways, by itself and with the piped output of other cmdlets and none of these options work, well, I'm sure they do, I can't make them work, I should say.

I'm not trying to recover anything, it's just email after all but I do need it working real badly, I appreciate your help if you can share. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can't move the mailboxes if its not mounted.
What you can do however is a create a new database and use Dial-Tone:

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

These steps will "re-home" the mailboxes to new database minus any messages or items,. In other words - empty :)

Outlook users will probably need to create new Outlook profiles as well to connect

I assume you have no backups?
If not, then 3rd party software can be used to recover the data perhaps from the damaged DB.

Answer 2

No, no backups. Some issues in Windows Server 2019 resulted in a lost directory. Data survived bc storage servers aren't Windows-based but while things finish settling up a few extra cautions are taken when using our own self-hosted services when they're non-redundant or have Microsoft code.

It actually occurred to me using some Set--type cmdlet but the thing is that it's still hard to get every mailbox as they are lot used by the system that have some obscure way of dealing with them. Setting the mailboxes to another database was way to easy for Exchange. Additionally I ran:
[PS] D:\>Get-Mailbox -PublicFolder | Disable-Mailbox
[PS] D:\>Get-Mailbox -Archive | Disable-Mailbox
[PS] D:\>Get-Mailbox -AuditLog | Disable-Mailbox
[PS] D:\>Get-Mailbox -RemoteArchive | Disable-Mailbox
[PS] D:\>Get-Mailbox -Archive | Disable-Mailbox
…and the database is still locked. I skipped the tone thing because I don't need to recover data at all.

I guess I'll have to spent the next days manually removing Exchange from the directory and setting up a new server. That sucks. It's not all bad though, I have some space old Macs with macOS Server that connects with AD and it takes about 10-12-click to set up a mail server and that's counting the clicks to login. It'll have to take Exchange's place. No webmail, though, it's the only feature we use Exchange for.

Nevertheless, thank you for answering. Like I said earlier, I'm truly grateful for that. Have a nice week!

…and I'm off to the freezing server room…

Answer 3

I skipped the tone thing because I don't need to recover data at all.

Don't skip it! :) It doesn't let you recover the data, it lets you start with fresh, empty mailboxes in a new database! I'd run through that doc I linked. It will allow your users to connect to new, empty mailboxes with little effort.

Please note that manually removing Exchange is not supported.

Here is what I would do: ( and its good practice :P )

1. Build a new Exchange Server.
2. Follow the dial-tone doc: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/high-availability/disaster-recovery/dial-tone-recovery?view=exchserver-2019
3. Recover the dead server in a supported way: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/high-availability/disaster-recovery/recover-exchange-servers?view=exchserver-2019
4. Once recovered, remove the old, dead server gracefully with Add/Remove Programs.