Hi,

In my environment two exchange servers existing in DAG

Both servers mailbox & CAS role running with exchange 2013.

One exchange server running in physical hardware and another one is running in virtual.

We have planned to covert physical exchange server to virtual(Hyper-V) with same Hostname and IP Address.

Normally follows below procedure.

1. P2V for exchange (Not recommended Microsoft)
2. Build new server and install, configure exchange.

My query is

I have planned to shutdown existing physical exchange server and remove from network.

Then plan to build new server OS with same configuration and Recover an Exchange Server with following command.

Setup /m:RecoverServer /IacceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

For exchange server recover please refer the below URL.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876880(v=exchg.150).aspx

Anyone please advise for this procedure will help us.

Regards,

Kumar N

 

• Moved by Jason Johnston [MSFT]Microsoft employee Wednesday, June 24, 2015 1:55 PM Not a development question.

Since your server is member of DAG, you need to remove the redundant DB copies from server before you can proceed to RecoverServer.

If that server host the single copy of a particular DB, you need to do DB backup and restoration.

Another point to take note is that if your installation path is not the standard one, you need to specify it in /TargetDir parameter of setup.exe.

• Proposed as answer by Simon_WuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator 15 hours 57 minutes ago

Since your server is member of DAG, you need to remove the redundant DB copies from server before you can proceed to RecoverServer.

If that server host the single copy of a particular DB, you need to do DB backup and restoration.

Another point to take note is that if your installation path is not the standard one, you need to specify it in /TargetDir parameter of setup.exe.

• Proposed as answer by Simon_WuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Saturday, June 27, 2015 3:28 PM

Hi LI,

Thanks for your Advise. What am I asking is above scenarios will work or not.

That is My exchange server is not disaster,down or corrupted but I am assuming like that and shutdown physical server and removed from network. then recovering exchange server.

Why am I asking existing exchange server is physical server but I am going recover in Virtual environment.

Is it work or not.

Regards,

Kumar N

• Edited by Kumar Nasam Wednesday, June 24, 2015 5:24 AM

There are tons of reasons why people choose RecoverServer instead of new setup.

1. It may not be easy to uninstall the old server. If it's the first mailbox server, it is hosting some arbitration mailbox. You have to move it and make sure they works in other server. It's not uncommon to hit various problem while doing uninstallation.

2. While doing uninstall, you make configuration changes to AD. With RecoverServer, you don't.

3. You need to make sure you can reproduce the old configuration into the new server. How many people do proper documentation? If new server is not configured properly, you'll immediately get into trouble.

4. New CAS server will interfere Outlook operation immediately after installation. E.g. autodiscover will point the outlook to wrong url until you restore the proper setting.

I would say RecoverServer is definately better than uninstall in such scenario.