Certain situations may require you to remove a server
from an Exchange organization, such as retiring an aging server in
favor of a newer and faster server or phasing out a previous version of
Exchange that has been migrated to Exchange Server 2003.
Removing an Exchange Server 2003 Server Using the Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard
The usual way to remove
an Exchange Server 2003 server from an organization is with the
Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard. This is the preferred removal
method because Setup is able to read and write information to Active
Directory and to remove all references to the server. However, to use
the Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard, there are some prerequisites
that must be met.
You must move all mailboxes to another Exchange server in the organization or remove them from each user account.
The
server must not be a bridgehead server or routing group master. If it
is, the role must first be transferred to another Exchange server in the
routing group.
The server must not be a part of any connection agreements.
The server must not have any connectors installed and in use.
If you attempt
to set the Microsoft Exchange component to Remove in the Microsoft
Exchange Installation Wizard, and your server does not meet the
prerequisites, Setup displays an error message advising you of the
problem. Figure 1 shows an example of an error when there are user mailboxes on the server that you are trying to remove.
To
complete the removal, you need to correct the situation, such as by
moving user mailboxes to another Exchange server in the organization. A
common pitfall is that the administrator account has a mailbox created
for it automatically when Exchange Server 2003 is installed. So, even if
you install and then immediately attempt to uninstall the mailbox, you
will need to first delete it. Once you have done this, you can start the
wizard again. It will run and complete in much the same way as when
installing Exchange Server 2003.
Forcibly Removing Exchange Server 2003 from an Organization
Unfortunately, in the
real world, things don’t always go as planned. It is possible that, for
one reason or another, Active Directory will determine that you don’t
meet the prerequisites, even when you are sure that you do. You might
have a situation, for example, where you have many mailboxes on your
Exchange Server 2003 server but you know you don’t need any of them and
you don’t want to take the time to manually delete them.
In such situations, you
have the option to forcibly remove an Exchange Server 2003 server from
an organization by using the Exchange System Manager console. Before
proceeding, stop all of the Exchange Server services. Right-click on the
server you want to remove in the console, point to All Tasks, and then
click Remove Server. The installation wizard will warn you that
proceeding will result in a loss of mailbox, public folder, and
configuration data, and that you should uninstall using Add Or Remove
Programs instead.
If you click Yes,
Exchange Server 2003 will ignore its built-in checks for protecting data
and will remove itself from the server and from Active Directory, with
the accompanying loss of data that entails. This is a last-resort
tool—one you would use if you were unable to perform a removal with the
Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard.
Important
Using
the Remove Server task only removes the references to the server in
Active Directory. There are additional steps that must be taken to
completely remove Exchange Server 2003 from the server itself. As
always, care must be taken when editing the registry, since incorrect
changes to the registry can result in problems up to and including
having to reinstall the operating system. Furthermore, because forcibly
removing Exchange Server is not the recommended way of uninstalling, you
will want to reinstall the system if at all possible to ensure there
are no lingering effects from this procedure. |
To finish removing the
Exchange Server 2003 server, there are a number of steps to be
completed. First, you will have to disable all of the Microsoft Exchange
Server services on the server (rather than just stopping them). Then
there are several registry keys that need to be deleted. If you are not
using the IIS components required by Exchange Server 2003 for anything
else, remove those as well.
Once you have completed
these tasks, reboot the server and delete the folder structure and
contents for the Exchange Server installation. Finish cleaning up by
reapplying service packs and patches, and if the Exchange Server 2003
server was installed in an Exchange Server 5.5 site, delete the object
in Exchange 5.5 Administrator. You will walk through these steps in the
practice at the end of this lesson. At this point, you can either
reinstall Exchange Server 2003, if necessary, or reassign the server for
some other purpose.
Practice: Removing Exchange Server 2003 from an Organization
Because you have not yet
added mailboxes to your server or connected to other platforms, you
should be able to remove your server using the Microsoft Exchange
Installation Wizard. The only caveat is that during installation,
Exchange Server 2003 creates an e-mail address for the account used to
install the program (often the Administrator account). You will have to
remove this address prior to running Setup. In the practice, you will
use the installation wizard to remove an Exchange Server 2003
installation, and then you will forcibly remove the other Exchange
Server 2003 installation.
Exercise 1: Remove Exchange Server 2003
1. | Log
on to the server with an account that has Exchange Full Administrator
permissions as well as Schema Admin, Enterprise Admin, and Domain Admin
permissions.
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2. | Start
Active Directory Users And Computers. Right-click on the user account
you used to install Exchange Server 2003, and click Properties. On the
General tab, remove the e-mail address listed.
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3. | Start the Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard from the Exchange Server 2003 installation CD.
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4. | Work
through the installation wizard, and when you reach the Component
Selection page, click the Action column next to the Microsoft Exchange
component and select Remove.
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5. | Allow
the installation wizard to remove the Exchange Server 2003
installation, and monitor its progress as it runs through the steps.
Quit the installation wizard when it completes.
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Exercise 2: Forcibly Remove Exchange Server 2003 from an Organization
1. | Disable
all Microsoft Exchange services on the server, and then delete the
following registry keys (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE has been shortened to HKLM
for formatting purposes):
HKLM \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ESE98 HKLM \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DAVEX HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EXIFS HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ExIPC HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EXOLEDB HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeMU HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeES HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\IMAP4Svc HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeAL HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeDSAccess HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeIS HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeMGMT HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeMTA HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\POP3Svc HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeFBPublish HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\RESvc HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeSRS HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeS HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeTransport HKLM \SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWEB
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2. | Remove
the IIS components SMTP, NNTP, and World Wide Web service (if not
needed by other components on the server), and remove the Metabase.bin
file from the Systemroot\System32\Inetsrv folder. Systemroot refers to the folder that Windows is installed into, such as C:\WINNT.
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3. | Restart the server.
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4. | Rename
the \Exchsrvr folder structures on all drives. For example, rename
C:\Exchsrvr to C:\Exchsrvrold. This is necessary if you have anything
you want to save, such as log files. Alternatively, you could delete the
directory structure.
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5. | Reapply any service packs and security patches previously installed on the server.
Note If
you installed the Exchange Server 2003 server into an existing Exchange
5.5 site, you will need to delete the Exchange Server 2003 server
object from the Exchange 5.5 Administrator program by selecting it, then
clicking File, and then clicking Delete. |
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6. | Open
the Exchange System Manager (the console is not in the Exchsrvr folder
structure, so you didn’t delete it in step 4) and navigate to your
server.
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7. | Right-click the server, point to All Tasks, and click Remove Server.
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8. | Confirm the removal of the Exchange Server 2003 data from Active Directory.
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9. | Close Exchange System Manager. |
