After SCR Activation - What Next?

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After watching my blogcast on Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1), several viewers have written to ask for instructions on how to resume production activity on the original database.

To recap, at the end of the SCR video, the SCR target copy was activated using database portability. On the original Mailbox server (E2K7), the original production database (MBX1) was left dismounted in its original storage group (SG1), and all users from MBX1 were now being serviced by a database called MBX1PORT, in a storage group called SG1PORT1 on a Mailbox server called E2K7DR. Click here for a screen shot illustrating this configuration.

Once user mailboxes have been rehomed to the activated SCR target database on E2K7DR, the final steps involve cleanup work on E2K7, creating a new database on E2K7, and then re-homing all of mailboxes from MBX1PORT on E2K7DR to a new mailbox database on E2K7.  To do this, you would:

  1. Delete the existing MBX1 database from SG1 on E2K7. This can be done in the Exchange Management Console, or by using the Remove-MailboxDatabase cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell.
  2. After MBX1 has been deleted, storage group SG1 can be deleted. This can be done in the Exchange Management Console, or by using the Remove-StorageGroup cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell.
  3. Once the database and storage group have been deleted, the file system can be cleaned up. All system files, log files, and the database file should be removed, the corresponding folder(s) should be deleted.
  4. Next, a new storage group should be created (e.g., SG1). This can be done in the Exchange Management Console, or by using the New-StorageGroup cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell. The storage group can have the same name as the original storage group, and it can use the same path(s) as the original storage group.
  5. Next, a new database (e.g., MBX1) should be created in the new storage group (SG1). This can be done in the Exchange Management Console, or by using the New-MailboxDatabase cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell. The database can have the same name as the original storage group, and it can be located in the same path as the original database.
  6. After the new database has been created, it should be mounted.

At this point, you're ready to re-home users. Here you have a couple of options as to how to proceed:

  • You can dismount MBX1PORT and use database portability to re-home the users in Active Directory, and then manually copy MBX1PORT to the folder containing the database created in Step 5 above (including renaming MBX1PORT.EDB to MBX1.EDB). The command you would use to re-home the mailboxes is very similar to the command used to move the users to the SCR target database. The only difference is you are now going the other way: Get-Mailbox -Database e2k7dr\sg1port\mbx1port |where {$_.ObjectClass -NotMatch '(SystemAttendantMailbox|ExOleDbSystemMailbox)'} | Move-Mailbox -ConfigurationOnly -TargetDatabase e2k7\sg1\mbx1 -Confirm:$False
  • You can use the Move Mailbox feature to move mailboxes from E2K7DR to E2K7.
  • You could also re-establish SCR for MBX1PORT using E2K7 as the SCR target computer. Then, after the SCR target database has been created, and after you have verified that SCR is active and healthy, you can wait until the SCR target copy is up-to-date (e.g., it is only behind the appropriate amount based on the 50 log file replay delay, or any other ReplayLagTime that is configured), and then you can disable SCR, and activate the SCR target on E2K7.

How you restore original production database activity is up to you.  It's also up to you if you even need to do this.  If your standby server is capable of supporting the users moved to it, and it meets all other requirements necessary to run Exchange in your production environment, you might decided to leave the users there, and use the original server as an SCR target, or re-provision it for something else.