Restore VM with AD and Exchange 2007

[MartinBenton]

Hi,

I have a Server 2008 with AD and Exchange on it that blue screens on boot. This machine went down on Saturday morning.

The last full VM backup using AVVI I have is thursday night.

I have restored this image but turned off the Virtual network.

How can i use this to rebuild my failed server?

Any help please.

[CraigV]

Hi Martin,

If thursday was your last successful backup, that is your recovery point...unless you had data backups after that, this is what you will need.

In VMware/Hyper-V (whichever you use!), you will be able to turn on the VM. Make sure it boots OK, and then readd the virtual NICs. A restart is probably in order after doing this.

If you have data drives seperate in your VM infrastructure, then you should be able to attach those files to the VM.

Cheers!

[Colin_Weaver]

If you are thinking of seeing if you can access the drives in your existing VM and copy that latests Exchange data around - then

a) you probably can add the VMDK files form the machine that won't boot as secondary drives into a VM that will boot

b) if the above works then you will almost certainly need Microsoft's help on what to do next with the Exchage data from your broken server as you will now no longer be looking at Backup Exec as containing the data you need to retrieve - I'd even suggest checking the concept with  Microsoft before you mount the vmdk files in a different VM as they might be able to help with your Blue Screen problem.

Or you can just accept that your Thursday data is your last backup and that some e-mails received since will have been lost and boot up the image you restored from Backup Exec.

[CraigV]

Hi,

Any news here? Have you come right?

Thanks!