Today morning we are not able to login to exchange server 2010.

it shows the following message : 

"The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed"

exchange server is running in vmware VM. Its single server with CAS, Hub and mailbox roles.

There were some snapshot remaining that took before upgrading to SP3. vmware was showing it required consolidation message.

So I removed snapshot and did consolidation.

After that I did Reset account from active directory for exchange server and then restart server and login to server with  local administrative account.

I then removed exchange server from domain , restarted the exchange VM and then join to our domain back and restarted again. In this step I didnt stop any of the exchange server  services. i didnt notice that step.

Also  it showed some network card issue while joining domain. and But it joined.

Every thing was ok. There was no issues for server. I was able to login to server now after rejoinining. But users started complaining that their mails are missing for last one month(april 8 to may 12 2015). Only mails missed during these period for the users. I dont know why it happened. How can i recover all these missing emails. 

We have veeam backup for exchange server. but to recover only a portion of emails  for these users one by one is really a tedious tasks.

one of the user completely lost his mailbox. 

I dont know whether i need to restore the whole VM or some other steps to get the mail back.

 Please help me the reason for the cause and how to recover mails for users

• Edited by jahesh.p.k 23 hours 48 minutes ago

Hi Jahesh,

Did you merge and remove the snapshot or applied and remove it.

It appears that the Machine got reverted to a older time, check if you have EventLogs post the SP3 update date.

Anyways, as you have recovered your Exchange Server to working condition now hopefully and the only thing missing are the Emails.

Lets talk about it.

Analyze this first:

How many databases are involved here, are users moved around or are on the same Database since the loss.

What do you backup using veeam backup for exchange server. Is it capable of restoring databases directly to RDBs. If yes good, else follow the below guidelines to recover and mount the RDB first.

Restoring Mailbox Data from a Recovery Database in Exchange 2010 SP1

Once done RDB is ready, use the below PowerShell command to Merge the RDB data to the user mailboxes:

Restore-Mailbox Identity UserA RecoveryDatabase RecoverDB RecoveryMailbox UserA

Bulk Restores

foreach($mailbox in Get-MailboxStatistics -Database RecoveryDB) {
  New-MailboxRestoreRequest -SourceDatabase RecoveryDB -SourceStoreMailbox $mailbox.DisplayName -TargetMailbox $mailbox.DisplayName -SourceRootFolder Contacts
}

Becautious for the Duplicate DisplayName, as you can't use the UPN or SAMAccountname here. Exchange DBs have only Displaynames for referencing mailboxes.

When I checked i found that it all happened after SP3 upgrade it seems.

Not very sure. But thats what i feel. I upgrade to SP3 one month before. And it worked all these days without any issue.

OWA the result is same. both outlook and OWA result is same.

I only want to recover mails  for last one month. There are mails missing from both inbox and user created folders for last one month(april 8 to may 12 2015). 

Kindly note that Im now able to login to server after rejoining. only issue is missing mails for last one month after SP3 upgrade.

• Edited by jahesh.p.k 23 hours 46 minutes ago

At last i found the issue caused. This was caused by our new inexperienced IT staff revert back snapshot to before RU9 installation of exchange 2010. He didnt inform me about this. I found it from vmware event log.

There is no way to comeback to previous state because we already deleted all snapshots for consolidation for vmware before diagnosing root cause.

Only solution is to retrieve all emails from backup for 150 users that is a tedious task.

• Edited by jahesh.p.k 9 hours 12 minutes ago

Hi Jahesh,

These things happens, atleast you were proactive enough to have the backup. (Hope you know that you have lost the data between the fullbackup and the Recovery time)

(You could have logged a call with the vendor to see if they have any mechanism to restore the reverted snapshot. - Not now ofcourse)

User's might find some emails in the Sync Issues folder, if thier outlook was on Cached Mode. Do check that, literate the users to do so. This will help in recovery in some cases.

Secondly Exchange Servers in production doesn't support VMware or Hyper-Visor snapshots.

However, virtual machine snapshots aren't application aware, and using them can have unintended and unexpected consequences for a server application that maintains state data, such as Exchange. As a result, making virtual machine snapshots of an Exchange guest virtual machine isn't supported.

Go through the below guide to exclude yourself from any unsuppoprted scenarios, which includes, Dynamic Memory and Dynamic Disks.

Understanding Exchange 2010 Virtualization

Exchange 2013 virtualization