Exchange 2010: Recover an Exchange Server

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:

1. Check ADSIEdit
2. Build a new VM
3. Reset the computer account in Active Directory
4. Join the new VM to the domain
5. Install any windows updates outstanding
6. Download and Install Exchange 2010 Prerequisites for the role you recovering
7. Extract the Exchange 2010 Media
8. Run the install
9. Install the Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup your server was on
10. 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:

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.