Recently we were working on a project to Migrate a client from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. We have been doing it for long and expected it to be another cake walk but it didn’t turn out to be one. We think the problem could have been that the project was delegated to us halfway and we assume something went wrong in initial server preperation and that caused an Exchange 2010 installation failure or rather a corrupt exchange 2010 Install later. We decided to scrap the server and rebuild new server and Exchange from scratch.

This article is not about the Exchange install we did, rather its about how did we clean up the old Exchange 2010 Metadata from domain, so that the fresh Exchange install can go smoothly.It is utmost important to clean up the previous Exchange install metadata from the domain else we keep getting one error after another.

Errors Like:

[ERROR] Database is mandatory on UserMailbox. Property Name: Database

Our Environment 

We Had a working SBS 2003 server with Exchange 2003 on it, Our target was to migrate it to Server 2008R2 with Exchange 2010.

So we joined a Windows server 2008R2 to domain and promoted it as a domain controller and then tried to install Exchange on it, which failed and we decided to the process from scratch again, as by now this new Exchange 2010 has already created its foot print in AD, our first task was to clean it up before we could install any thing else.

Lets start the clean up

Step1:

The first step of the clean up was to demote the windows 2008 R2 server as a domain controller, its always best to demote the domain controller gracefully other wise again be very sure to do the metadata cleanup for it carefully. You can refer Here for step by step instruction of Domain controller MetaData cleanup.

It would had been really nice to uninstall Exchange 2010 from the server gracefully as well, but our Exchange install was not willing to complete, So after demoting the server as a Domain Controller , we just unplugged it from the domain.

Step2:

We had the Windows 2008R2 Server rebuilt with a clean install of Windows 2008R2 and started installing all the updates on it to get it ready for a fresh Install

Step3:

We opened Adsiedit.msc on the exchange windows 2003 Domain controller and deleted Computer account for the Windows 2008R2 server, Opened DNS snap-in and cleaned up its DNS records well.

Step 4:

This is the crucial step where we are going to do metadata cleanup the Exchange 2010 from the environment.

Open Adsidedit.msc on the domain controller, Expand configuration partition-> Expand CN=Services-> Expand CN=Microsoft Exchange-> Expand CN=First orgnization->CN=Administrative Groups

Here you will see two Administrative groups, namely

CN=First Administrative group : This is for Exchange 2003

CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)  :  This is the Metadata we are talking about to cleanup, this is exchange 2010

Listen carefully, My environment only consisted an existing Exchange 2003 and a corrupt Exchange 2010, so here I am going to Delete this whole CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT) folder, But if you have any other Exchange 2010 in your environment then you cannot do that. Also before deleting this folder its best to ensure that we have a healthy and recent system state backup of the domain controller.  So that if needed this folder can be recovered.

PS: Do you know why the Exchange 2010 creates the Admin group with this crazy string “(FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)”, Let me tell you, it actually means Exchange12Rocks.  Wondering how ? Subtract 1 from each alphabet and you will reach to this ( Pretty Cool Huh… 🙂 )

Exchange Administrative group to be deleted from Configuration Partition

Step 5:

OK, Now that we have cleaned up the administrative group for Exchange 2010, we have to delete the discovery Mailbox user and System Mailbox user which it created in AD too.  This is very important otherwise the exchange Install will keep crashing with error.

Open Active directory users and computers (DSA.msc), Go to users container and under it look for couple users to delete (Refer the screen shot).

Delete if any one of the following found, again its recommended to have a system state back up of domain controller before any deletion

1) Discovery search mailbox

2) FederatedEmail.4c1fxxxxxxxxx (there is long number after the name)

3) SystemMailbox{10fxxxxxxxx}  (Could be more then one)

Exchange Users to be deleted from DSA.msc

Step 6:

Well the step 5 concluded our Exchange 2010 Metadata cleanup, but before we start to install Exchange 2010 again on the new server, it is very important for us to run  /PrepareAD on the domain with Exchange setup.exe file.

Yes, I know that you already upgraded your Schema last when you tried installing Exchange 2010 and Schema is a irreversible process hence not needed to be done again, but still we are doing this as we are more interested in the domain prep which this does.  All the stuff which we deleted in last few steps, some of them was created during the last failed Exchange 2010 install but alot of it was created last when you ran /PrepareAD before Exchange 2010 install. Like the Admin groups are created, Federation mailbox is created.  So as we have deleted all that, in order to get it back. lets run the setup /prepareAD again.

After this we just joined the Fresh 2008R2 server again to domain and promoted it as a domain controller, after that we went ahead and installed Exchange 2010 SP3 on it and install went pretty smooth.

Hope this Article was helpful and will save you from a-lot of failed installs of exchange because of old MetaData.  Incase you need further support urgently, you have an option to opt for our paid support Here or  you can also opt for free email support Here 

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Shishir Chandrawat

An automobile enthusiast at heart and computer geek by profession, started my Career with MS in 2005.Left Jobs and started Pledge Technologies (the parent company to Grishbi) back in 2009.We have been providing IT consulting to various Small and Medium businesses across US and UK since then.Our company specialises in Microsoft Server technologies like AD, Exchange, the rest and with numerous Office 365 migrations under our belt, we quite an expert with that too. Whatever we learn in our day to day life, we share it back on Grishbi as a Thank for all the love and support our customers have given us.

Latest posts by Shishir Chandrawat (see all)

• Exchange 2010 Std: Mailbox server has reached the maximum database limit of 5 Error RcrExceedDbLimitException - December 12, 2016
• Exchange 2010: Unable to add Mailbox Database copies on DAG member servers, Error: An error occurred while processing a request on server - December 12, 2016
• Unable to Mount Microsoft Exchange DAG Database, Error: Failed to determine the mount status of the active database copy - December 12, 2016