Take the scenario where you have the following (single mailbox server to keep it simple):
- 4x Mailbox databases mounted
- 1x Public folder database mounted
- 1x Recovery DB mounted
I have always understood it that this is now the limit reached for Standard edition and you can only mount a recovery database as an additional database and the limit is 5 normal. I met someone who says they can mount 5x Mailbox databases and 1x Public folder and now claims that public folders do not count as a DB count in Exchange 2010:
- 5x Mailbox databases mounted
- 1x Public folder database mounted
Doesn't this just mean that they have mounted a recovery database and think it is a normal database? I do not have a 2010 Standard lab to test in (only use Enterprise) but all the articles I see for standard say the 5 limit is the sum of all databases including public folders. You can mount a 6th database if it is a recovery database but that is it.
What do people with Standard edition see? I do not have access to their environment to confirm, but I would think they have just mounted a recovery database and if they now try to do a restore will have difficulty as they will be forced to overwrite a production database due to not being able to mount a recovery DB?