If a disaster occurs, you must perform a full recovery of the
entire Exchange server computer to either a repaired or separate
physical computer, called the recovery server. To ensure a
successful recovery, you must use a server that is not available to
users or in production. Before you re-install Windows 2000 or
recover Exchange, make sure you follow these constraints on
restoring Exchange data to a non-production server.
Guidelines for restoring Exchange to a recovery server:
The Exchange server should not be removed from Active Directory
after a disaster, even when an Exchange server needs to be
completely rebuilt.
The recovery server should not be in the same domain forest as
the production servers. The recovery server should reside in a
separate domain forest.
The recovery server must have the same name as the original
server.
The name of the storage group that hosts the restored database
must use the same name as the storage group that hosted the
database on the original server.
The name of the database to be restored must be the same
database name that was used on the original server.
The database name must be unique across all storage groups on
the recovery server. For example if the database name is PRIV,
there can only be one instance of a PRIV database on the recovery
server.
The name of the organization must be the same on the recovery
server as on the original server.
The name of the administrative group must be the same on the
recovery server as on the original server.