Uninstalling Exchange 2010

[Jobos]

So over the past few months we moved from on site exchange to 365 using a cutover migration. Everything went well and now it's time for exchange to be removed from the server. This server is 6 years old and will be scrapped this summer so exchange needs to go. We are not syncing AD passwords.

 

I opened up programs and features and ran the exchange uninstall but under mailbox role prerequisites to comes up with loads of errors about the database contains mailboxes so I must be doing to wrong. What is the best way to remove exchange in my situation?

 

Thanks.

[FN-GM]

I should imagine those mailbox will be for service accounts (can't remember the exact names). If you use the Get-mailbox command on powershell can you see them?

 

I would delete the databases before you un-install.

[Jobos]

I've not touched the mailboxes and they are all still there so about 60 of them. So do I go into the database management tab and remove the databases from there?

[FN-GM]

You will need to delete all the mailboxes first, then delete the DB then un-install.

[Davit2005]

So you do not DirSync either then??

 

Because if you do you may still need some form of onsite Exchange to manage the users??

[Jobos]

So you do not DirSync either then??

 

Because if you do you may still need some form of onsite Exchange to manage the users??

 

No and being a primary it's only the staff who have email.

[Davit2005]

No and being a primary it's only the staff who have email.

 

Having no exchange on site should give you less of a headache then :-)

[FN-GM]

Because if you do you may still need some form of onsite Exchange to manage the users??

 

We don't have onsite exchange and use Dirsync just fine.

[Jobos]

Right, I've used the Disable-Mailbox command on a test user and it removes the mailbox without removing the user in AD. Now looking through the AD attributes I see many of the exchange attributes have gone including the proxyaddresses which I think outlook uses when setting up the profile the first time.

 

If I run Disable-Mailbox and then convert the user to a mail enabled user outlooks connects to 365 after the user enters their password so this script looks promising https://mikecrowley.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/converting-a-mailbox-to-a-mailuser-and-not-loosing-attributes/

[Jobos]

This is turning out to be a bigger task than I thought!

 

Removing the mailboxes went well but exchange still won't remove without the public folders gone which is funny as I didn't think we had any. It appears OAB still had public folders as a distribution method so change that to web based but EMC still says the public folders contains replicas and won't let me delete it.