Re: Need help urgently please!

John,

Thanks for your help. I'll create a back-up folder for the Queue and copy
the messages there so they won't be lost.

New messages are being delivered to the forwarding address that I added to
the accounts in AD. I've tried copying the queued messages to the pickup
folder in hopes that they would be forwarded to that mailbox like the
current ones. I have given my users the login details of the temp mailbox
where all their messages are being copied. I did this at 7PM last night.
The backup was done around 2AM and the server crashed at 1:30PM. So there is
a significant amount of mail will be lost if we can't recover the logs.

Also, there is a significant amount of mail in the queue that arrived at our
local server between 1:30 and 7PM that needs to be delivered at least to the
temp mailbox so they can view it.

Since it was the operating system drive that crashed it will take
significant time to install Windows and Exchange and join the domain and get
set up again before the restore. To compound matters, they are in Florida
where a Tropical storm came through over night and all the electronic stores
are closed. The drive that crashed was a SATA Drive. None of the desktops
there have SATA drives and there's no spare. They can't go get one at the
store because all of the stores are closed. So they're trying to get an IDE
Drive installed and running, but getting an error: Battery Low No BIOS
Detected.

Also, I configured their server here and shipped it down there. They don't
have a copy of Exchange Enterprise which the server was running before.
There really wasn't anything about Enterprise that they were using. I don't
believe that their mailbox store was larger than 18GB. Can they install
Exchange Standard on the New OS and restore the mailboxes from the tape? Or
just by pointing to the DB files on the RAID array that should still be
good? The raid is SATA Raid on PCI RAID card. I've done this before by
installing Exchange, renaming the existing folder that holds the DB files,
moving the Exchange DBs to the RAID, renaming that folder and renaming the
original to the default name and loading the old DBs. Renaming the new log
files folder and creating a new one and copying the old logs into it. That
worked in past when replacing servers and things like that.

How do I change the wait time on the SMTP VS?

Thanks,

John




"John Oliver, Jr. [MVP]" <jcoliverjr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OaoHOIEzGHA.4580@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have not tested this but you can try stopping your SMTP VS and copying
those EML files to a temp location, when you get the new server up and
running you can copy them back into the Queue folder to be deliverered or
set your timeout on the queue messages to an extended time until the remote
server is up and running. As for reading them now, there really is no way
to do this since there are in EML format. If your users can wait until you
get the new server running then you drop those messages in the queue to be
delivered.

Chances are there is not going to be any great changes but just be aware
any changes after the last backup and the crash will not be recoverable
without the logs. If the crash happened early in the morning then you
most likely will not have much to worry about.

If it were me, I would just do a complete restore from tape so I know I
get everything back to the previous backup.

--
John Oliver, Jr
MCSE, MCT, CCNA
Exchange MVP 2006
Microsoft Certified Partner

"John Riddle" <thrillsoftathotmaildotcom> wrote in message
news:uz81QeDzGHA.4796@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
John,

Thanks. Yes, I know that I can read them using Outlook express. However,
I need my remote users who are across the country to be able to read them
using Outlook web access. How can get them from the queue into the
mailbox that I've created for them to do that?

We create a full backup every night and the transaction logs are cleared
out. So the transaction logs that are on the bad drive only hold about 10
hours of changes to the db. In this situation, what would be the
difference between what's on the tape and what's in the good db files on
the raid array?

We replicate all of our Public Folders between the two sites, so I'm not
concerned about that data. Its only the mailbox info. We are a sales
organization so all of the remote users are sales people and really need
their communications with their customers from yesterday and today.

Thanks for your help.

John

"John Oliver, Jr. [MVP]" <jcoliverjr@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23IHwVQDzGHA.4368@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
For your recovery you will need to restore from tape to recover your
server and transaction logs. The only problem with using the databases
currently on the RAID is that they are missing transanctions from the
log files that are gone now and can only be restored from tape. So best
way to restore is to do a complete Tape restore although I would move
the existing databases off RAID to a temporary location just in case the
Tape backup fails for some reason. For reading emails in the VS queue
folder you can use Outlook Express for .eml files.

--
John Oliver, Jr
MCSE, MCT, CCNA
Exchange MVP 2006
Microsoft Certified Partner

"John Riddle" <thrillsoftathotmaildotcom> wrote in message
news:eRUNxO8yGHA.996@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,

Today the C: drive of the sole server in our remote office crashed and
we may not be able to get it back. We have daily backup that was most
recent last night about 5AM. The server they had in that office is a DC
with RAS, DNS and Exchange. There are about 10 exchange mailboxes on
that server. The databases are on a RAID array that should be fine, but
the log files were also on the C: Drive that crashed. Our MX records
are set up to list their server as primary for their domain (they have
their own .com addresses) and our as secondary mail server. So emails
since the crash are piling up in our local server in the queue. The
users down there are frantic to be able to read the emails that they
missed all day, but are in our server. I created a temporary mailbox
and have set forwarding from their mailboxes to the temp "catch all"
mailbox. This works for new mail coming in now, but there are still
hundreds of messages in the queue from before I set up the forwarding.
I looked in the vs 1 queue folder for them to drag into the pickup
folder, but there are no messages in the queue even though there shows
hundreds of messages in the queue on ESM. How can I get these queued
messages into the temp folder quickly so that these users can view via
OWA?

Also, can someone suggest the best recovery procedure for rebuilding
the remote server assuming that the server won't recognize the C
drive.We're getting a new drive first thing in the AM and want to know
what the best method assuming the log files are on the bad drive. I'll
try to mount it as a slave drive after rebuilding the server and
restoring that way from the backup. If my databases are good, can I
just point to my RAID array as the location of my databases and try to
move the log files to to over-write the default log files when
exchange is freshly installed?

Thanks for any help

John










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