Scenario:
Exchange 2010 Server in your environment crashes, is hit with a virus or malware or any other situation. There may come a time when you need to recover an Exchange Server and as daunting as the task seems it’s not that difficult.
Here are the steps we will go through:
- Check ADSIEdit
- Build a new VM
- Reset the computer account in Active Directory
- Join the new VM to the domain
- Install any windows updates outstanding
- Download and Install Exchange 2010 Prerequisites for the role you recovering
- Extract the Exchange 2010 Media
- Run the install
- Install the Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup your server was on
- Perform additional Admin Tasks like setting your virtual directories, adding in your SSL Certificate, etc.
In this post, we won’t go through everything but will focus on Step 1 and Step 8.
Recovery:
Step1:
Open up ADSIEdit and Navigate to the following location:
- CN=<ExchangeServerName>,CN=Servers,CN=First Administrative Group,CN=Administrative Groups,CN=<ExchangeOrganization>,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=DomainName,CN=local
- Right click on the Exchange Server Object in question and click Properties.
- Locate the msExchInstallPath attribute and check the properties to check the install path.
Skipping a few steps, we are ready to run the installation.
Step8:
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As you can see in the screenshots, we use the setup /m:RecoverServer command line from an elevated prompt. You will also notice what roles will be installed and once complete it will give you a message as shown above.
After the server is recover you can proceed with the remaining steps to get your server back into production again.
Hope it helps.