Dirty Exchange removal.

[Sambooka]

Hi,

Sort of an awkward question. Let me preface it with our current topology.

We have two sites.
We have an empty forest root domain
We have two child domains.
Site 1 has a DC for the forest root and all the DCs for child domain1
Site 2 has a DC for the forest root and DCs for the other child domain2
Site 1 and Site 2 are connected via VPN.

Have I lost you yet? Ok..

We have 1 Exchange Domain.
Site1 is Exchange 2010
Site2 is Exchange 2003
Mail transport, PF replication etc is all working.

Here we go:
We need to sever the connection between the two sites.

Site1 will stay up, business as usual,normal mailflow

Site2 will stay up, but will have no active users, no mailflow etc. They do need to keep their DCs up for authentication purposes and need their Exchange 2003 server up for reference purposes.

Understand that once the VPN is cut it will never never NEVER be reconnected. Buh bye.

After this is done I will need to clean up our AD/Exchange env.
Is it as simple as going in to adsiedit and removing the other exchange server?

 

[ShackDaddy]

Are they part of the same Exchange organization: ie, when you look in the Exchange 2003 console, do you see the other Administrative Group and the Exchange 2010 server in there?

Things I can think of:
1) Move all PF replicas to the E2010 server and delete the PF database on E2003.
2) Get in a position to delete the mailbox database (delete or move all mailboxes out of database except the three system mailboxes)
3) Move the public folders container out of the E2003 Admin group and into the E2010 admin group like you would when decommissioning a server.
4) Remove all routing connectors between the two servers
5) Remove the recipient update policy objects like you would in a normal decommissioning.

In general, I would look at a M$ migration document covering migrating from E2003 to E2010 and look at the bit at the end that covers how to decommission the old server, and follow those guidelines. If you've done the things above, you can technically delete the server object via ADSIEdit instead of uninstalling it with media.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com

 

[Sambooka]

Thanks Shack!

Not quite the situation tho. This isnt a migration. It is more like "This exchange server is no longer available , there are no users on it and nothing important in the PFs so how can I delete it using System Manager and ADSIEdit?" I cant bring it back so I just need to clean all traces out of AD.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Ok. Most of the things I mentioned above can be cherry-picked from the AD, but you need to know that it's not just a matter of deleting the server object. You could start there, but if issues crop up, it will indicate that more vestigial bits need to be removed from the AD. Could be that nothing ever crops up.

Also, don't just delete the server object, delete the Servers object container that holds the server. But don't delete the Administrative Group.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com

 

[Sambooka]

Ok, thanks.

My "plan" was this: I have seen the server offline for a weekend and our users had no major issues so just kill it off. What errors do occur I will fix one at a time. May take a while to clean up but we will get there

 

[ShackDaddy]

Zounds gut!

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net
TrainSignal.com