Hi,

I need to rebuild a 2012 Server with AD (Domain controller) + Exchange 2013 starting totally from scratch.

I do have a copy of the clearly unmounted Mailbox Database.

For whatever reasons, the new server MUST use the old Computer Name and the old AD domain configured as a new forest on the new server. So, the old DC was DC.mydomain.com and it has to be the same on the new machine.

I did the AD configuration respecting these constrains.

When it comes to Exchange 2013, I did a clean install of the 2013 CU3 (same as it was on the old server) and used the same organization name (as required by Database Portability). Then, I followed  the procedure reported at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876926%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx and sadly, when I run the

Get-Mailbox -Database <SourceDatabase>

I get no results, even if the DB contains several mailboxes.

I double checked every step of my procedure also according to different forum/blog posts I found googling but no luck.

Please, give me an advice.

Any help is appreciated.

Hi

You need to restore AD to use database portability - just calling the domain and the servers the same name won't work.

Steve

Hi

You need to restore AD to use database portability - just calling the domain and the servers the same name won't work.

Steve

Thanks Steve!

Could you point me to a good resource detailing how to restore AD?

I still haven't found a good way to export the old AD in a way to be effectively imported on a brand new server.

Thanks again!

Hi

What backup software do you use for your AD backups at the moment?

Steve

Hi Andre,

In order to restore AD, you can check this MS-Library for step by step guide : 

Active directory backup and restore

In case you wish to do it through software, you can have check-out this link : http://www.activedirectoryaudit.com/ which take backup of AD and restore it to any desired stable state in the past using backup.

I believe that you might be able to mount an EDB file under the circumstances you describe.

Get-Mailbox does an Active Directory lookup of users, and returns the mailboxes it finds.  Simply restoring the database does not populate all the data in AD with the mail-enabled attributes.  You might be able to do that by using Connect-Mailbox to connect the user account with the disabled mailbox in the database.

So, if you can get the database (with no log files) mounted using Mount-Database -AcceptDataLoss, then you might be able to use Connect-Mailbox to connect the newly-created user accounts with the disabled mailboxes in the database you mounted.

I believe this should work, but I've never had to do it myself, so I can't promise any

Thanks a lot for all the precious contributions.