I'm not merely being a naysayer - but I'm saying "nay, nay - don't do that"! There is little to no advantage and the risks and trouble you have to go through are many. In order to make it work, you'd have to set up a server off the network (not amember of the domain), but with the same name as the original server, in which case it's got to be a member server in order to join the domain later. Ok, no prob. But then you have to create an Exchange site with EXACTLY the same names (site and containers, etc.) and then restore your Exchange databases from a backup and then restore all of the intervening message logs. And it still might not work. This is only recommended by Microsoft as a disaster recovery scenario. The recommended way to do this is to install a second server to the same Exchange site, then move your mailboxes, rehome your public folders, do some other stuff and then remove the first server from the site. This allows you to simply use the Move Mailbox feature in Exchange to move the mailboxes from one server to another; then follow these two TechNet articles to rehome the public folders and do the other steps to remove the first server: Q178927 and Q152959 (available from
www.microsoft.com/technet if you don't have the CDs). If you REALLLY want to do the disaster recovery scenario, read this article first: Q247109 - this is all about how to restore an online backup. Hope this helps!
