Windows 2003 SBS was always a bit weird for me. I\u2019ve been playing with computers all my life and I know Windows Vista and earlier versions like the back of my hand but when it comes to server software on Windows I always have this unnerving feeling.<\/p>\n
You should know that most of the time my presence is required when a server is almost dead or acting strangely so my experience shows that an unstable Windows server is usually \u2018fixed\u2019 by a complete reinstall \u2013 something I have never had to do to my linux servers.<\/p>\n
Right now I am installing Windows 2003 SBS R2 for somebody I know. Their previous administrator never felt the need for finishing the setup or actually buying the license so when I came in, all I could do was reinstall the whole system.<\/p>\n
I created a backup using NTbackup from the Exchange Store (which was half disabled on their server) and now I am trying to restore it. Guess what: it won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I hate Microsoft for its poor practices and this is one of them: supplying backup tools that work within a very very confined space. In this case a fresh install will kill the option of restoring it without extensive Google-ing.<\/p>\n
To be exact: I unmounted the Mailbox Store, marked it for restoration in the properties and fired up NTbackup to restore the backup. After setting a temp path (C:\\temp) I hit restore and immediately see the whole thing fail. Of course NTbackup can\u2019t tell me jack so I need to dig in the Application Log and I find this:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeIS Event Category: Exchange Backup Restore Event ID: 9635 User: N\/A Computer: WIN2003 Description: Failed to find a database to restore to from the Microsoft Active Directory. Storage Group specified on the backup media is 581cb7ee-5fec-4d93-8f71-dcfe55a73319. Database specified on backup media is Mailbox Store (SERVER1), error is 0xc7fe1f42. <\/pre>\n<\/p>\nAfter searching high and low I finally get a blog post from someone who solved this. The error is in fact so simple, they should execute the team that thought that this was a funny way to describe it.<\/p>\n
The names don\u2019t match. Seriously.<\/p>\n
In the Server Console \u2013> Advanced \u2013> Exchange \u2013> Servers \u2013> Win2003 \u2013> First Storage Group you will find a store called \u2018Mailbox Store (WIN2003)\u2019 \u2013 assuming your server is called win2003 \u2013 whereas the backup has a store called \u2018Mailbox Store (SERVER1)\u2019. NTbackup can\u2019t fathom the possibility that we actually want to restore to a store on this server without the exact name match so it fails.<\/p>\n
Solve this by right-clicking on the store, renaming it to the old name and restarting the restore. It will run now.<\/p>\n
On a side note \u2013 this was not the end for me. I got event id 1088 after I managed to restore it: Distinguished Name is not the same for the Store and the server. I can\u2019t grasp why them Redmond idiots haven\u2019t made it possible to simply rename the DN of the store to make it work in case of a migration like now.<\/p>\n
I tried renaming the legacy DN using the ADSI editor and the LegacyDN tool from the site. I couldn\u2019t get it to work after trying 50 guides so finally I tried to uninstall the server software. This failed (of course) and left me with a system in which I couldn\u2019t resume the setup. So after a new installation and 2 hours of waiting\/babysitting I am back where I started, ready to restore my Exchange backup\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Windows 2003 SBS was always a bit weird for me. I\u2019ve been playing with computers all my life and I know Windows Vista and earlier versions like the back of my hand but when it comes to server software on Windows I always have this unnerving feeling. You should know that most of the time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[266,185,267,63,268,460,459,270,269,264,42,265],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-blog-entries","tag-extensive","tag-for","tag-google","tag-ing","tag-marked","tag-no_ok","tag-not_ok","tag-properties","tag-restoration","tag-restoring","tag-the","tag-without"],"views":1381,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cyberwizzard.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}