Hardware crash - Restore Exchange 2003 Information Store

[banan2]

Hello,

Recently a customer of ours had a critical hardware failure on their Exchange server. The whole RAID array was destroyed and we had to put up a new server.
The system is up and running, the email was cached to clients, so we didn't do any restore job on Exchange, until we found out that they missed a few public folders. It is not many users in the enviroment anyway.

Now I am trying to restore those public folders, but I can't seem to actually do it.

So far I have done this, in the following order:

1. Installed a server with Server 2003, same name as the crashed server.
2. Installed Server 2003 SP 2
3. Joined the server to the domain
4. Installed Backup Exec 12.5 with the Exchange Agent
5. Installed Exchange Enterprise with the /disasterrecovery switch
6. Installed Exchange SP2 with the /disasterrecovery switch
7. Tried to run a restore in Backup Exec. Just a simple restore with only the Information Store selected. No redirection, no modifications in the options for the Exchange Agent.
8. Failure.

The error message I get is this:

0xe000ff00 - Unable to restore some Microsoft Exchange components because one or more of the databases are currently mounted or because the Recovery Storage Group is not properly configured. Use the Exchange System Manager to check the configuration of the Recovery Storage Group and the mount status of the databases.

The database is not currently mounted, it's a clean /disasterrecovery installation. I have not done anything with the RSG as I have no experience with it and as far as I have read the RSG should not be used to restore public folders or complete Information Store Backups.

The crashed server had Exchange Standard, does it matter if I use Enterprise to restore?
Have I even done it the right way? As far as I have read of guides on the internet that is pretty much the way to do it.
Just ask if you need more information.

Thanks in advance.

[banan2]

What exactly do you mean by create another account with the same credentials? It's the administrator user in the domain (which is live now). To create a user with the same credentials I have to delete the old one, is that even possible? 

[Martin_Forster1]

Hi banan2

can you check this kb
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B940032&x=21&y=18

2nd Suggestion, have you tried to run the be Servicers with an account with exchange Enterprise Permissions ?

Or follow this suggestion
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/de/forums/exchange-2003-public-store-restore-rsg-fails-0xe000ff00

Regards

[CraigV]

Hi Banan2,

Nope, it isn't possible to delete your domain admin account.
What I meant was the following:

1. In Active Directory Users & Computers, create a new account with an unique name and email address.
2. Give this account the same permissions as your  account that you are using in BEWS (so Domain Admins, Exchange Admins etc).
3. In BEWS, create this account with the same details: DOMAIN\serviceaccount and add in the password.
4. Use this to try restore your Exchange. you can test this using a credential check in BEWS during the restore process.

If this works, then look at using this as your BEWS service account rather.

[banan2]

Craig, I created an account 'BackupExec' with Administrative rights, included rights on the Exchange server and tried to restore with that one with the same error I got earlier. Even tho, the trace.txt log file was filled up with 30mb of data, and no errors occured in the log file, just in Backup Exec.

Martin, the first kb there is irelevant. I don't get any VSS errors in the Event Viewer. The only entry in the EventViewer is the one I mentioned in an earlier post.

The second link is about restoring to RSG, as far as I can tell you can't restore Public Folders to a RSG.

[Martin_Forster1]

yes, but the part with the permissons on the database and and Storage group, does always apply. Or you can just check there if you have the permissions.

[banan2]

I do have permission, yes.

[CraigV]

Mmm...might be time to log that call with Symantec and let us know the solution...