Remove second exchange server

[fs483]

Hello,

I had a setup with 2 exchange 2007 servers located in 2 different physical locations. The main office has the exchange server the receives all the mail and would forward mail to the remote office if the mailbox was located there. Both sites had 2 DCs and one of the DCs at each site had exchange 2007 on it. The remote office was sold off and we had to cut the VPN between the 2 offices used for replication and exchange connection. Now, I need to remove the second exchange instance at my main office before removing those DCs from AD. I also have a couple of public folders that I need to delete from that were replicated from the remote site to the Head Office. How should I proceed?

Thanks
fs483

 

[theravager]

You have the old servers, or the old servers are gone?

 

[fs483]

Old servers gone!

 

[theravager]

2007 hasn't been around long enough that i have personally had to removed a server thats gone and no longer required. I assume there is a process thou.

What you can do thou, is install a temp server or vm and rebuild that server in recovery mode and then decom it properly.

The DC isn't a big deal as its a standard metadata cleanup and your done.

The replicas can also just be removed from public folders.

 

[58sniper]

theravager is right - spool up a VM, do a disaster recovery of the removed server, then uninstall correctly.

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/

 

[fs483]

Hmm, since the Exchange server was on a DC located in a different site in AD Sites and Services, how would my temp server be recognized? What would be the proper steps ? Building a temp server with windows 2003 on it is no problem but how would I make AD think it was the same one that died (and had exchange on it). I mean, I can't use the same name as I did on the dead server since the server in the head office still thinks it's alive.

Thanks

 

[theravager]

Not sure if you would have to do this, but you could simply create a vlan with the same subnet, make it routable and use the old ip address and server name. So logically it is the same.

 

[Zelandakh]

You can pull it out of AD then manually remove anything left using adsiedit. It isn't fun but it works.

 

[fs483]

I know I can just yank it out of AD but I don't want to do that yet since I still have exchange running on it. I've had to do a cleanup (removing dead DCs) but I never had an exchange on them before. Ok, let's suppose I build a new server with Windows 2003 using the same name as the dead DC and have all Service packs/updates installed. Next, do I join it to the domain at the Head Office?

 

[Zelandakh]

Join it to the same domain it was on.