Exchange 2003 Decom - Epic Fail

[irbk]

Exchange 2010 is all up and running. Got everything moved over and we are ready to decom the Exchange 2003 server. Follow the steps from

http://www.msexchange.org

to decom the server (deleting the routing connectors, changing the Recipient update service, etc) and go into Add/Remove programs and remove exchange 2003. Everything is humming along swimmingly and then an unknown error has occurred, then it says it finished correctly and wants to reboot the server so I let it. Now the server is some where between having exchange installed and not installed. It's not in the Add/Remove programs anymore, yet several (not all) exchange services still exist. So I follow the steps on

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833396/

to manually remove exchange. All seems well enough, however, when following the directions above, I was in ADSIedit. Under Configuration - cn=configuration, dc=<domain>, dc=com - cn=services - cn=microsoft exchange - cn=< organization name> - cn=Administrative Groups - CN=<domain> - CN=Servers
I see the old exchange server listed. It's the only server listed in this area. I'm not quite sure if I should delete it or not. I know ADSIEdit is like a billion times more dangerous then regedit and I don't much like doing anything in it. So I wanted other's input.
Thanks in advance.

 

[irbk]

Now I see warnings on my 2010 server saying "The topology doesn't contain a route to Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003 <exchange2003_servername>.<domain>.com in Routing Group CN=<DOMAIN>,CN=Routing Groups, CN=<DOMAIN>, CN=Administrative Groups, CN=<org_name>, CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN=Services, CN=Configuration, DC=<domain>, DC=com in routing tables with the timestamp 3/23/2010 2:38:19 PM."
So I'm guessing something needs to be done to remove that stuff.

 

[irbk]

I'm also seeing
Process Microsoft.Exchange.RpcClientAccess.Service.exe (PID=2584). Configuration object CN=SMTP (EXCHANGE2003SERVER -{guid }),CN=Connections,CN=DOMAIN ,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=DOMAIN ,DC=com read from CURRENTDC .DOMAIN .com failed validation and will be excluded from the result set. Set event logging level for Validation category to Expert to get additional events about each failure.
Errors. Again, they are pointing at the exchange 2003 server. I saw over on

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...0/thread/334a26a8-14e4-4fb1-94c0-458e42d23d18

to just delete the entries that are causing the error, but I wanted a 2nd opinion.

 

[58sniper]

<don't blame me if it breaks>I'd be inclined to clean out the nefarious entries for the 2003 box using ADSIEDIT</don't blame me if it breaks>

but I wouldn't blame you if you called PSS, either. Too little we see here to give a truly informed answer. Don't delete the administrative group that the 2003 box was in. Just kill off entries pointing to the old box.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[irbk]

The "Warnings" don't seem to cause any harm. They are just warnings, but I don't like warnings as I don't know if they are causing real harm.

Do you know if MS has released a Best Practices Analyzer for 2010 yet? The one that comes built in seems to be for 2007 (go figure, exchange 2010 with a BPA for 2007 built in) and fails the "Exchange signature" saying that my DomainPrep version is 12639 and it should be 4406 for exchange 2000, 6936 for 2003, or 10628 for 2007. So the tool that MS included with exchange 2010, doesn't recognize exchange 2010. <rolls eyes>

 

[irbk]

Well, I deleted the connections that were causing the warning. But I also noticed one thing. You mentioned not to delete the group that the 2003 box was in, (it's all in a group called "Domain") when I do run the Exchange BPA, it comes up with my 2003 administrative group and my 2010 admin group. So some how that's still lingering in there. I might have to waste my call to MS just to get the old server all cleaned out of our AD.

 

[irbk]

Making progress. I reinstalled Exchange system manager on the old 2003 box. Went into Administrative Groups - Domain - Servers - <2003 exchange server> Right clicked on it, selected all tasks, then selected Remove Server. So now I no longer see the old Exchange 2003 server listed under servers. Now the question is, do I need to keep the old Administrative Group? The only thing that's in the old admin group is a routing group that has no members or connectors and a public folders group that's not connected to anything. So I think I'm making progress, but it's slow.

 

[58sniper]

Don't delete the original AG.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[irbk]

Ok, consider the original AG not deleted.

I swear one of these days I'm going to flatten my entire network and rebuild the entire darn thing.