Recipe2.19.Removing Administrative Groups

Recipe 2.19. Removing Administrative Groups

Problem

You want to remove an AG because it is no longer needed within your Exchange organization.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

1. Open ADSI Edit (adsiedit.msc) from the Windows Support Tools.

2. Expand the configuration container. Drill down to the appropriate CN=Configur-ation, DC=<domain>,DC=<tld> container for your Exchange organization.

3. Expand the CN=Services container, then expand the CN=<Organization> object that matches your domain and the CN=Administrative Groups node it contains.

4. Right-click the AG you want to delete, then select Delete. Click OK twice when prompted.

Discussion

Every object in Exchange has to be owned either by a server (e.g., storage groups, databases) or by an AG (e.g., servers, connectors, and routing groups). If you delete an AG without removing the objects in it, that would leave orphaned objects, which would be bad. However, if ESM allowed you to easily remove an AG and all the objects it contains, that would be worseimagine a single-click way to remove all of your servers, storage groups, and so on! To make it harder to delete a needed object accidentally, Microsoft blocks deleting AG objects from ESM; you must use ADSI Edit or VBScript to remove unnecessary AGs.

Microsoft recommends against deleting AGs from VBScript.

See Also

Recipe 2.18 for creating AGs and Recipe 2.20 for moving objects between AGs