Recovering a failed Exchange server
Recovering data is one thing. Sometimes, however, servers fail beyond the point where they can easily be repaired, thus calling for a different approach to the restore process.
The following recipe will guide you through the process of recovering a server, after which you will be able to proceed with recovering data as described earlier.
Getting ready
In order to complete the following steps, we assume that you have executed the previous exercises up to the point where you have a valid backup that you can use to restore data.
How to do it…
When you get to the point that you deemed a server as irrecoverable and plan on rebuilding the server from scratch (on the same or new hardware), there is a series of actions you need to perform:
Reset the computer account in Active Directory.
Join the 'new' computer to the domain using the same name as the failed server.
Run
setup.exe /mode:recoverserver.Execute post-recovery actions like restoring server-specific settings...
