Removing Exchange 2010

I have installed Exchange 2010 so many times, but never had to remove them specially if it is in production environment. But since i installed it in an environment where Exchange 2003 is having and they wanted to test the new version as a coexistence scenario. This was actually done long time back though I could not write.

Here are the steps.

 

1.     Remove the Discovery Search Mail Box.

 

-       You can view the Mailbox using following command

 

[PS] C:\>Get-Mailbox *discoverysearch*

 

Name                      Alias                ServerName       ProhibitSendQuota

----                      -----                ----------       -----------------

DiscoverySearchMailbox... DiscoverySearchMa... exch-2010        50 GB (53,687,091,200 bytes)

 

-       Then remove the Mailbox (Replace the "Exch-2010" with your server name)

 

[PS] C:\>get-mailbox *discoverysearch* | where {$_.Servername -eq "Exch-2010"} | Remove-Mailbox

 

2.     Remove the Arbitration Mailboxes.

 

[PS] C:\>get-mailbox -Server Exch-2010 -Arbitration | Disable-Mailbox -Arbitration –DisableLastArbitrationMailboxAllowed

 

 

3.     Remove the Mailbox Database.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Remove-MailboxDatabase

4.     Remove the Public Folder Database.

 

[PS] C:\>Get-PublicFolderDatabase | Remove-PublicFolderDatabase 

 

5.     Remove the Routing Group Connectors.

 

-       To view the connectors

[PS] C:\>Get-RoutingGroupConnector

 

Name                            SourceRoutingGroup                                           TargetRoutingGroup

EXCH-2010-Mailsvr03     Exchange Routing Group (DWBGZMFD01QNBJR)     First Routing Group

Mailsvr03-EXCH-2010     First Routing Group                                               Exchange Routing Group
 

-       To remove the connectors

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-RoutingGroupConnector | Remove-RoutingGroupConnector

 

6.     Finally Remove the Exchange Server from the Control Panel, better if you remove the server roles one by one since it is easy to troubleshoot if the uninstallation gives any errors.