decommissioning a test exchange 2003 server 2

[umbletech]

Hi All

I seem to remember you can't uninstall via the setup program until you remove the public folder store on this server.

Its in a large production exchange environment so I wanted to check it didn't have any impacts. It doesn't have any special roles e.g. routing group master.

Is it just a matter of going to the server in system manager and right clicking on the public folder store and removing it?

 

[Zelandakh]

Check PF instances to ensure there is nothing left then dismount it and delete it. Then you can uninstall Exchange.

 

[ntinlin]

Try this MS KB article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822931

How to remove the first server from the administrative group. It's pretty much the bible.

Neill

 

[umbletech]

Thanks - i'll do it by the good book

 

[umbletech]

Unfortunately wasn't so easy...
My problem is that since SP2 you have to rehome the public folders.
If I try and delete the public folder store I get:

"You cannot delete this public folder store because it contains folder replicas"

The public folders and public folder instances under the store are empty.

Until today this server's VLAN wasn't open on port 25 so I doubt anything replicated to it. We've got a lot of public

folders but I've gone to the replication tab on 20 of them at random and not found them replicating anywhere and anyway since

this was blocked off I don't think anyone could have setup a replica.

On our live public folder server - public folder referrals are set by routing group and its in a different one from this test

box.


I've tried taking the store offline - renaming pub1.edb and pub1.stm
remounting the store and then deleting but it gives me the same error.

I found this:

http://doesitecho.com/archives/2006/01/forcibly_removing_public_folders.php

This seems to back this up:

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3333425&SiteID=17

So I assume I run the uninstall on dev2 and then do the deletion in adsiedit or is it safer the other way round?

I've done this to kill off old app servers before but never exchange and its a big environment at a busy time of year, which

is why I'm being so cautious. Would be very handy if adsiedit had a save object function ...ah well.

 

[umbletech]

Got it resolved through the GUI in the end. One of the admins has a semi-test server - we did a 'move all replicas' onto that. It still wouldn't delete the pub store after that.

Shutdown DEV2 and did a delete server from ESM and that worked so I assume the server being online was the key factor.