Category Archives: Small Business Server

SBS 2003 / Exchange 2003 Shutdown Script

Microsoft is quite clear about Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory being installed on the same server: don’t do it, it isn’t supported.  The only exception to this rule is Small Business Server, where out of necessity you will find both running side by side.

Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t feel the need to address one of the problems behind the bar in SBS: the shutdown hang.  There is a good chance that if you go Start | Shutdown on an SBS server without any prior actions, the entire shut down process may take anything between 15 minutes and infinity to completed.

There is an easy to prevent this from happening is to shutdown all Exchange services prior to running Start | Shut Down.  This is easy enough to do via a good old batch script, a copy of which is enclosed below.

To use, simply run the batch script prior to restarting or shutting down your SBS 2003 server.

ECHO Stopping Exchanging Services
net stop MSExchangeES
net stop IMAP4Svc
net stop POP3Svc
net stop RESvc
net stop MSExchangeSRS
net stop MSExchangeMGMT
net stop MSExchangeMTA
net stop MSExchangeIS   /Y
net stop MSExchangeSA   /Y
ECHO Services Stopped

Repairing SBS Backups

In virtually all Small Business Server instances I have worked with, the chosen method of backup has invariably been that of the included SBS backup functionality. This isn’t a standalone backup system, but rather a control mechanism that utilises NTBackup to create the actual backups.

Invariably, this backup method does start to misbehave after time. Whilst some problems are easy to resolve (insufficient space on the backup media for example), there are some problems that do not appear to be easily resolved. When this happens, I fall back onto a approach where that rebuild the backup configuration from scratch.

The basic are as follows:

  1. Turn off SBS Backup through Server Management
  2. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Windows Small Business Server\Backup and rename the backup script file Small Business Backup Script.bks
  3. Return to Server Management and re-configure the Backup

That’s it. The key part here is the renaming/removal of the Small Business Backup Script.bks file. This contains the configuration data for the SBS backup, and is not removed when the SBS backup is disabled.