It may occur that an Active Directory object is deleted without using the provisioning system. For example, a user may be accidentally removed from Active Directory.

In this case, that user's globally unique identifier (GUID) remains in the Plans and Resource Manager databases, as well as the Exchange Information Store. If the administrator recreates an entry in the Active Directory store for the user, a new GUID is created for that user in Active Directory, unrelated to the GUID in the solution databases.

Recreating the entry will cause subsequent provisioning requests to fail, as the user in the Active Directory store is not recognized by the Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS). In the meantime, orphaned entries persist in the solution databases relating to the deleted entries for the user. For example, if the administrator attempts to move the user to a new server, the provisioning request will fail, indicating that the user account is not valid.

Note:
Items deleted from Active Directory are "tombstoned" for 60 days. Items deleted within the 60-day timeframe can therefore be simply be undeleted. For more information, see How to restore deleted user accounts and their group memberships in Active Directory.

Provisioning requests for that user or organization fail with "Object Not Found" errors, as the object in the Active Directory store is not recognized by MPS. This happens even if, subsequently, the administrator has used Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to attempt to recreate that object in the Active Directory data store.

In the meantime, orphaned entries persist in the solution databases relating to the deleted entries for the object. If the administrator attempts a provisioning operation, the failure will indicate that the object is not valid. For example, an attempt to use MPS to move a deleted user to a new server will fail, indicating that the user account is not valid.

A public folder store has been deleted from Active Directory without using MPS.

MPS tracks public folder store identifiers in the Plans database, the Exchange Public Folder store, and in the Resource Manager database.

An organizational unit has been deleted from Active Directory, without using MPS.

MPS tracks OU identifiers in the Plans database, in the Resource Manager database, and, if that organization uses Microsoft Outlook, in the Exchange offline address book (OAB) store.

The organization cannot subsequently be reprovisioned, because it already exists in the Resource Manager databases and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) address asset type exists in the Plans database.

A mailbox store object from Active Directory that is being tracked by the Exchange Resource Manager has been deleted.

This may happen as a result of decommissioning a server as part of a larger disaster recovery scenario, such as a server hardware failure. In this case, the server's data was moved or restored to a new server with new databases.