MS Exchange + Broken RPC Service

[ddrueding]

Interesting problem:

I have 2 Exchange servers. The old one is broken in such a way that the RPC service crashes when the exchange load is high, causing a reboot (no, it isn't Blaster, I checked). I built a nice new shiny Exchange server to take over, but trying to move the mailboxes causes the RPC service to crash and again reboot.

Is there a way to move the mailboxes without the RPC service working? Do I need to resort to exporting to PSTs and re-importing? What do I risk losing using that method?

Thanks all,
~David

 

[Chewy509]

Are you using exmerge? IIRC there is a setting that drops its connections down to 1 at a time, which should reduce the load.

(Exmerge exports the mailbox to PST and reimports said PST to the same named account - and doesn't need matching SID's, which is great for domain rebuilds or migrating users to completely separate domains).

In the past, the only thing lost with export to PST are the mailbox rules which resides on the EXCH server, and the share permissions (if they used shared folders from within their own mailbox). Also Public folders, have to be copied to a user's mailbox for the export/import process via PST.

PS. RPC is critical for EXCH, AFAIK there's no way to get EXCH working without a working RPC service.

 

[ddrueding]

Thanks Chewy, that is what I had in mind if I couldn't get RPC up; still troubleshooting that one.

 

[ddrueding]

I wasn't using Exmerge, I was using the "move mailbox" tool in System Manager, the one for 2003 is multi-threaded and handles 4 boxes at a time. This would work long enough to handle a single small mailbox, but a larger one (some well over 2GB) or a batch of smaller ones would crash it out.

 

[ddrueding]

Well that didn't work. I'm now on my second $500 phone call to MS tonight. The first was for a borked DNS/AD and now it's for migrating some corrupted message stores. Their getting $1000 tonight because they write overly-complex, hard-to-support software. Bah.

 

[Chewy509]

Their getting $1000 tonight because they write overly-complex, hard-to-support software. Bah.

And even then they have no idea on what the fix is.

 

[ddrueding]

They eventually got it. After 4 hours to fix what was essentially a single faulty entry in a very simple DNS tree and another 6 hours to fix what was essentially a registry key. Of course, after fixing the registry key you got to stop, restart, dismount, and mount services and stores in what must have been a secret handshake, or none of it worked.