When you’re trying to move a mailbox to another mailbox database, you’ll discover that the command Move-Mailbox is no longer available. What next….
In Exchange 2010 Release Candidate (RC), there’s a new command available to move a mailbox to another mailbox database, New-Moverequest.
In this example I’m going to move all the mailboxes, including the default arbitration mailboxes to a new mailbox database, otherwise you can not delete the default mailbox database created by Exchange!
1.) With the following command you can get a list of all the Move Requests. Get-Moverequest | fl
2.) Run the command Get-Mailbox -Database “database name” -Arbitration | ft -wrap -auto for a list of all the hidden arbitration mailboxes in the default mailbox database
3.) To move the arbitration mailbox to the new mailbox database, run the following command New-MoveRequest -Identity “SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}” -TargetDatabase MD01
4.) After moving all the arbitraion mailboxes to the new mailbox database, run the following command Get-Moverequest | fl
5.) Before we can remove the default mailbox database, you’ve to remove all the move requests associated with the source mailbox database
6.) To get a list off all the associated move requests, run the following command Get-MoveRequest -SourceDatabase “Mailbox Database 1205181900”
7.) To remove the move requests, run the command Remove-Moverequest -<Recipient ID>
Note: For a list off all the Recipient ID’s you can run Get-Mailbox -Database “database name” -Arbitration | ft -wrap -auto
8.) After removing all the remove requests, you’re able to succesfully remove the default mailbox database
