Q. How do I move back to the original SCR source after I've activated a Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) replica?

A. Activating an SCR replica is a fairly painless procedure, designed to allow activation of a replica in a disaster situation with a small amount of manual intervention. Once you've resolved the problem at the primary location, the next question is how to move mailboxes back to the primary data center. Ideally, you would run the Switch-StorageGroupCopy cmdlet, but sadly, no such cmdlet exists and the process is far more labor intensive.

If you activated the SCR replica using the RecoverCMS method, to switch back to the primary you clear the CMS configuration on the old primary site (/ClearLocalCMS) then enable a database copy on the original location (so it's replicating its data from the now active DR site). You then dismount the databases on the active box, then perform a recovery onto your original primary. The activation on the primary site may require a full database reseed, which could take a long time! This process is detailed on Microsoft's site.

If the SCR replica was activated through database portability, then to fail back you first have to remove any storage groupsA and databases from the old primary server and enable SCR from the current source to this server. Once SCR is enabled, you can perform a SCR activation back to the primary site in the same way the backup location was activated.

Remember that once you've reactivated the primary site, you'll have to re-enable SCR in the backup location.

Related Reading:

Videos:

Check out hundreds more useful Q&As like this in John Savill's FAQ for Windows. Also, watch instructional videos made by John at ITTV.net.