Restoring an Exchange CAS server

[zoltank]

I'm in a situation where it might be preferable for me to restore one of my Exchange 2010 CAS servers. I have two CAS servers which are NOT in an array. One is called Exchangehub and is the transport server and the CAS server for internal clients. I have a second server called ExchangeOWA which is just a CAS server and services external clients (OWA and Activesync). We've been having issues with it since yesterday afternoon, and I'm considering restoring it from our weekend backup. If nothing else, it'll let us know if there is an issue with the server itself or if the issue is being caused by a problem external to the server.

In this situation I'd shut down the production server, bring up the new server, see how it's working, and then possibly shut it down and bring up the original server. From what I understand, I should be able to do this with a CAS server since it doesn't do anything transactional with any other server.

Does anyone have any hands one experience with this? I obviously don't want to make a problem worse.

[BrandonH]

So long as the backup isn't more than a few months old, I don't think it should be an issue. I will say however that restoring may only be a stop-gap if you don't know what caused the issue. Restoring a server like this generally just resets the clock in the issue, unless you can find what caused it.

If it's not hosting datastores, I'm a big supporter of rebuild first, ask questions later. If it was me, I would build a new CAS, migrate traffic, then bring down the problem server. If it's to the point that it's inaccessible, restoring it would buy you the time you need to get this done.

The only other suggestion I have is to avoid Exchange 2013 like the plague. Don't take this as an opportunity to upgrade if you don't have to! I've had nothing but issues with bug after bug, that's all after spending a week getting the first server alone to install properly. SP1 wasn't the fix all I thought it would be needless to say.

I will say it shouldn't make your problem worse, I do it all the time with everything from simple web servers to enterprise SQL servers. I will say the first time it comes up, reboot it. Servers restored seem to take a reboot before they work.. well. Generally until I give it one reboot, it's access to the GC is hit or miss. We use this method for upgrades and major changes, Veeam makes it easy to have an up to the hour standby ready to power on.