Removing Exchange Servers from the Organization

You may, over time, find any number of reasons to remove an active Exchange Server 2003 server from your Exchange organization. Common reasons include server maintenance, consolidation, or replacement, although the possibilities are virtually boundless. The process you must follow to safely remove the Exchange server is straightforward; however, it may take some time to perform depending on the number of mailbox or public folders located on the server. The basic, high-level steps that you must complete in order to remove the Exchange server from the organization are outlined here:

1. Synchronize public folders located on the Exchange server that need to be retained in the Exchange organization by creating a replica on another Exchange server.

2. Use the Exchange Task Wizard or the ExMerge utility to move all mailboxes to another mailbox store in the Exchange organization.

3. Create any required connection agreements and virtual servers on one or more Exchange servers that will be remaining in the Exchange organization.

4. Remove Exchange Server 2003 from the computer.

5. Remove the server from the Active Directory organization.