This blog is about decommissioning one of few Exchange 2010 servers in an exchange organization.
The exchange server we are trying to decommission is a typical CAS/HUB/MBX role server with a public folder and mailbox database each. Assumption is that all mailboxes and public folders have been moved to another server.
Deleting Mailbox database
If you have already moved all the mailboxes, you run get-mailbox on that database, you should get nothing:
Lets see if it has any arbitration mailboxes:
we can see there are 3 arbitration mailboxes which are not normally seen. Because of these mailboxes, if you try to remove the database, you get:
So what is an arbitration mailbox and why is it hidden?
Arbitration mailboxes are a place holder for emails and information for moderation. Moderated transport is new in Exchange 2010. Here is a good article on Moderated transport. These mailboxes are created when the first exchange server is deployed. You can recreate these mailboxes (if they are accidentally deleted) by running setup.com /prepareAD. They are hidden because they are used for internal exchange moderation workflows and user intervention is not required.
Coming back to our server, so how do we remove these mailboxes? We already learnt how to enumerate them, so they can just be piped to a move-request commandlet so they are moved to the new database you had created for your other mailboxes. Here is an example:
where db1 is the database on another server. If the command runs successfully, we get:
You can view these move request in EMC :
Now if we run the get-mailbox –arbitration commandlet for the database we want to remove, we shouldn’t get any listed:
Now lets try to remove the database:
as you can see we were able to remove this database successfully.
Deleting Public Folder
If the goal is to move the public folder to another server (like in our scenario here), MoveAllPrelicas.ps1 is the easiest way to use it. Here is a TechNet article on it. The syntax is:
.MoveAllReplicas.ps1 -Server Server01 -NewServer Server02
Now, after you have moved all the mailboxes, lets see if the database has any arbitration mailboxes.
Before deleting public folder, lets identify if any of the mailbox databases are using this public folder as its default public folder. This PS command can be run to enumerate the name of the mailbox database and its corresponding public folder database:
If any of the databases have the public folder being removed as its default public folder, now would be a good time to change it to another public folder where you would have replicated the data to.
Once the public folder does not have any data, it can be removed by using :
Once the mailbox databases and public folder database is removed, verify that there are no connectors that is using the mentioned server.
We are ready to uninstall Exchange Server 2010, go ahead and start Add/Remove Programs. Start, type appwiz.cpl
Highlight Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and click on Uninstall
Unselect the roles that needs to be uninstalled.(note that management tools won’t be enabled to be unselected unless all the other roles are unselected)
Click next and if everything was followed as per the article, the server will be free of Exchange Server 2010.
Thank you – that was very useful and informative.
We have now successfully decommissioned our old Exchange server after relocating information to a new server set in our private cloud.
Kind regards, Peter
I am in the process of doing the same thing but my scenario is a coexistance with 2013. Problem is that send connectors, receive connectors, OAB, public folders are all replicated across both servers. My 2013 is in production. when i tried uninstalling 2010 keeps saying that all have to be moved? I fear if i remove the new send connector (point to the new exchange), it will remove it from 2013 as well.
Does anyone have a best practices list to restrict any new mail from coming in or out of an exchange 2010 environment but still allow users to access old emails ?
This was very helpful for me to decommission our Exchange 2010 server. One point I would like to add is if you are having trouble removing your Public Folder database (as I did) using ASDI Edit to remove it worked for me.
“Exchange 2010
Open ADSI-Edit and got to configuration
Navigate to this path:
CN=Configuration,DC=DOMAIN,DC=LOCAL
CN=Services
CN=Microsoft Exchange
CN=EXCHANGE_ORG
CN=Administrative Groups
CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)
CN=Databases
CN=PUBLIC_FOLDER_DATABASE
Now you can delete the PF-Database you want to get rid off. “
Thanks for the simple steps. Successfully decommissioned Exchange 2010 in our environment after moving to 2013 for 3 weeks now.