OK Here we go back in the swing of things and the first server I am going to “Virtualize” is an Exchange 2007 Server that holds the Edge Server Role. After Reading this article it all seemed fairly straight forward. How wrong I was !!! Here is what I did that led me to this unwanted ERROR “The Exchange Server is in an inconsistant state” when I was trying to install the Edge Transport Role on the new Hyper-V Virtual Server.

The first thing that needed to be done was an export of the current server configuration using, as Microsoft calls it, “cloned configuration tasks”. There is a folder located in the install directory of Exchange, generally C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ called “Scripts”. Inside there are 2 Powershell Scripts that you will need.

They are ExportEdgeConfig.ps1 and ImportEdgeConfig.ps1.

To capture the configuration we need to run the ExportEdgeConfig.ps1 script in the Exchange Management Shell like so:

./ExportEdgeConfig -CloneConfigData:”C:\CloneConfigData.xml”

NOTE: Make Sure you run the Exchange Management Shell as Administrator (right click > Run As Administrator)

Now I am going to be keeping the same computer name on the new Virtual Edge Server, so I did this next.

Shutdown the current Exchange Server and then Reset the Computer Account in Active Directory. Next was to start up the NEW Exchange Server, rename it and join it to the domain. You MUST make sure that the drive letter configuration is the same as the OLD Server.

Next Install Exchange, I did this by running trying to run this command:

Setup.com /Role:Edge

This is where it all fell apart. I got an error and decided to try again by running the setup.exe file. Sure enough it was No Good and I received this Error “The Exchange Server is in an inconsistant state”. Then I tried to run the install in Recovery Mode by using this command:

setup.com /m:RecoverServer

Guess what? Failed again. Things were looking pretty grim. Considering this was a virtual machine and only hosting the Edge Transport Role I copied across a sysprepped Windows Server 2008 VHD that I created earlier and started from scratch.

While the Server was starting up I reset the Computer Account in Active Directory and I also need to get brutal and use ADSi Edit and remove the entry in the following location:

CN=Configuration, DC= Domain Name, DC=com, CN=Services, CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN=, CN=Administrative Groups, CN= , CN=Servers, CN=

and also remove the entry in the Exchange Servers and Exchange Install Domain Servers Security Groups.

The Server was now up and running and joined to the domain so I tried again to install Exchange 2007 and the Edge Transport Role, and all seemed to go through fantastically!

After Exchange was installed I then need to run the New-EdgeSubscription CMDLET on the Edge Server:

New-EdgeSubscription -FileName “c:\EdgeServerSubscription.xml”

Then import that XML File on the Server that is running the Hub Transport Role. To to that you can use the Exchange Management Console and navigate to this spot.

Organisation Configuration > Hub Transport > and then click the Edge Subscription Tab.

After that was completed I gave the Edge Server a Restart and the mail started flowing in again…….There seemed to be a few people that have had a similar issue so I hope this sheds some light on a procedure on how to get around this issue. Another bonus to virtualization !!!!.