Hello all,
I am looking on steps to decommission a single Exchange 2003 server from our environment. We have moved to an online hosted e-mail solution so an in-house server is no longer needed. We have a front and a back-end servers, but there is no need for role transfer or keeping anything related to Exchange. I said we have only 1 exchange, because to my knowledge a front end server can just be removed from the exchange admin followed by server shut down.
I am looking for a way to completely remove the back-end Exchange 2003(and maybe the front-end if my assumption above is incorrect).
So far i am thinking:
1. Export all public folders to a .pst
2. Export all mailboxes to .pst
3. Delete/disconnect all mailboxes for all users from AD
4. Remove server form AD using the /removeorg switch
5. Shut down the servers (front and back-end). This step might need to be preceded by Uninstalling Exchange 2003 from the setup wizard, but that is what i am not sure about.
All the information i found so far refers to transferring one exchange server to another and then decommissioning it, but we need to only decommission a single server and take it out of the environment for good.
Thank you in advance for your help!
