Recovering an Exchange 2010 Server: CAS and Hub Transport

From time to time an Exchange server will crater and you'll have to recover it. Luckily most Exchange info is stored in AD, so it's not too hard to recover. In this post, I'll show you how to recover a 2010 CAS/HT server.

Prep

Install the OS

First, either create a new VM or set up a physical server (you can reuse the failed server if you've fixed the problems) and install Windows Server 2008 R2.

Configure the IP

You have to set the new server’s IP address to be the same as the old server.

Reset the computer account of the old Exchange Server

Make sure you do not delete the computer account but, reset the account in AD.

Install the CAS/Hub Transport server’s roles/features

Hub Transport and Mailbox servers require the Office Filter Pack which you can grab here.

After you've installed the Filter Pack, run the following command in PowerShell:

Import-Module ServerManagerTo install the typical Exchange 2010 server roles, in PowerShell, run:

Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy -Restart

The server will bounce automatically by using the –Restart switch.

After the restart, in PowerShell, run:

Set-Service NetTcpPortSharing -StartupType Automatic

Next, run MS Update to patch the server.

Export and import the public certificates

You'll need to export/import your certificates for your CAS server like OWA, Outlook Anywhere, and ActiveSync into the new server.

Recovering the CAS/Hub Transport Server

Now that you've installed the pre-reqs, proceed with the recovery.

Grab your Exchange Server 2010 SP1/2/3 DVD or browse to the extracted folder

**Note** The setup files will need to match the currently installed version or it will throw errors.

Fire up an Elevated Command Prompt and execute setup.exe from the installation binaries with the /m:RecoverServer switch.

setup /m:RecoverServer

Once you’ve run setup.exe, you’ll see it go through the pre-req checks and then it will install the CAS/HT roles

When the setup finishes, reboot the server.

After the reboot, check your Services and ensure that the automatic ones start up correctly.

Post CAS/HT Server Recovery

Test all Exchange services like internal/external email, OAB, public folders, free/busy, etc.

Check the Event Logs and make sure there are no major errors.

Reconfigure OWA services

Recovering a CAS server will require additional configs (basically any custom settings that you had set, and you'll need to manually add them to the new server) like:

OWA Authentication, which is provided by IIS.
IIS internal/external redirects
The external URL field within the OWA (Default Web Site)

That's it! In my next post I'll cover how to recover a Mailbox server.