So far in 2 part series of this article we worked on how one member of a Database availability group (DAG) cluster of Exchange 2010 server got broken and the cluster service got stopped and then in Part 2, how to add database copies back on a freshly added DAG member. Please refer to following links to article if you would like to understand that in detail.
Part 1 : Removing a mailbox server from DAG and Windows Cluster and re-adding it
Part 2: Reseeding a database copy after re-adding a new member to DAG.
Now after we had re added the member to windows cluster and DAG and we also added two of the database copy to the problem Mailbox server (which is now fixed) back, as we tried to add the third mailbox database copy we encountered the following error.
[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity usersDB -MailboxServer ex-mb1 -ActivationPreference 2
Server “EX-MB1” has reached the maximum database limit of 5.
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (UsersDB:ADObjectId) [Add-MailboxDatabaseCopy], RcrExceedDbLimitException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : 61A9F5C9,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.AddMailboxDatabaseCopy
So, we know that Exchange 2010 Std server has a hard limit of 5 active mailbox databases on it. Hence, we checked the exchange management console and found 4 active databases on the server, now this was a huge concern. So we decided to dig deep and we opened Adsiedit and went to databases under exchange administrative group in configuration partition.
CN=Databases,CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=North company,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=Domain,DC=org
Here we were able to locate all sorts of databases, basically, all the databases in the whole exchange organization including our problem server and other mailbox servers in exchange organization, As a first step we looked for databases which we were unable to see in EMC and that was only one the public folder database.
Next, we wanted to ensure that this public folder database is tagged to the problem server (the mailbox server which was showing over limit), so we checked following two things on the database
- The HomeMTA attribute of the database, by right click ->properties in adsiedit on the database name. The HomeMTA attribute clearly showed our problem server name. Refer screenshot below
Exchange-2010-HomeMTA-attribute-of-mailbox-database-property-under-adsiedit-msc
2. Checked MxexchEDBFile attribute and found the path where EDB file (Database file) is hosted locally on my Mailbox server. Checked both the mailbox server and found the file on the problem server.
Exchange-2010-msExchEDBfile -attribute-of-mailbox-database-property-under-adsiedit-msc
Now that we ensured that this additional database was also tagged to our server, we went ahead and deleted it and after this we were successfully able to add a database copy to it using the procedure which we used in Part 2 of this article series.
I hope with this three article series, I was of some help to my fellow System admins. If this didn’t resolve your issue then you do have an option to open a paid incident support with us here and also if you found some other solution on your own, please do mention in comments below so that you can enlighten us and other fellow members with your findings.
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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
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