We must check the Send Connectors as well, using the following cmdlet all Send Connectors of the organization will be checked against the server name, the expected result is a clean output. A regular Exchange Server 2016 will have five (5) Receive connectors and their names will match the names listed on the image depicted below. The administrator must check the Receive Connectors, perhaps the server that is being removed has a special relay connector or something like that. If there is any mailbox still hosted on the server, the administrator can use EAC (Exchange Admin Center) or use the following cmdlet to move the mailbox to another mailbox database. In order to list all databases of any given server, the following cmdlet can be used. If you want the specific number of mailboxes, and don’t want to copy and paste that information into Excel, you can run the following cmdlet:Īnother way to make sure that the mailboxes are gone is by trying to delete the Mailbox Databases themselves, if there is any mailbox being hosted an error will be displayed and we won’t be able to delete it.
Make sure that you moved all mailboxes from the server that you are trying to removeĪ good way to test if the server has any mailbox hosted, it is running the following cmdlet, and it will provide a list of all current mailboxes being hosted on the desired server.A restart of the server before starting the process is always helpful.Remove the Monitoring agents, when using SCOM, make sure to remove the agent from the console as well.In this article, we will focus on removing from a single server and in a future article here at we will be removing Exchange Server from a member of a DAG (Database Availability Group).īefore going to the technical steps in removing an Exchange Server from an Exchange Organization, make sure to validate these following key points: Today, we are going over a different topic which is the process to remove Exchange Server 2016 server from an existent environment. You can use the following command.Most of the articles are about new installation, deployment, adding more features and etc. To get this information you should use the Exchange Management Shell. However you should get all information about the mailbox of the deleted user and disconnected mailbox. To get this back non-hidden you have to use an easy command in the Exchange Management Shell: clean-mailboxdatabase "Mailbox Database 1166050598" Instead, the mailbox in the source mailbox database is switched to a “ soft-deleted” state, known as soft-deleted mailboxes. INFO: when mailboxes are moved from a 2010 SP1 database to any other database, Exchange doesn’t fully delete the mailbox from the source database immediately upon completion of the move. A new command “Remove-StoreMailbox” has been introduced to purge disconnected or soft-deleted mailboxes (new in 2010 SP1). Things have changed slightly in 2010 SP1, atleast in the Exchange Shell world. When you removed an users the disconnected mailbox will disappear hidden. To totally unlock this section you need to Log-inĪs you probably already know in Exchange 2010 the Purge option disappeared and there is actually almost no easy way to remove a disconnected mailbox from the Exchange 2010 server.