Hello all,
I have the unsavory task of pulling a full virtual machine backup from tape from a month ago. I need to pull a user's contacts from the exchange database existing on it. I recovered the data from tape and used VMware convertor to reintroduce it into our environment. I kept the virtual exchange server on the internal vlan (ie. not on prod network) or I assume bad things will happen as this server is still running in our production environment today. I power it on and attempt to exmerge and it naturally complains that there is no DC to authenticate to. So I cloned a DC and put on same internal vlan and things went south from there. The DC cannot see the domain and despite seizing FSMO roles the server refuses to work.
So my question is - is there an easier way to recover this data? Can I piggyback the vmdk of the recovered database onto the production server and exmerge the contacts from there without causing a rift in the space time continuum? I am so close to getting this done. Anyone ever have the unpleasant task of recovery a full VM from a tape or something similar to this? Please help. Thanks.