An Exchange server is Microsoft’s on-premises mail and calendar offering that allows organizations to streamline effective communication amongst employees. You will be required to remove Exchange Server Mailbox for the below reasons:
- When an organization is updating their existing Exchange server with a new one
- When the Exchange server is migrated from on-premises/hybrid to cloud environment
This article will teach you how to decommission an Exchange Server Mailbox from a single sever using GUI.
Pre-requisites:
Before performing the action, ensure that:
- The antivirus and backup agents are removed from the server.
- Monitoring agents are removed. In case of SCOM, ensure that the agent is removed from the console as well.
- The mailboxes in the soon-to-be removed server are migrated to the desired server.
- The server is restarted before the uninstallation process.
You can customize your removal process using the following Powershell commands:
(Get-Mailbox –Server <ServerName>).count: - When you want to know the count of mailboxes stored in the server.
Get-MailboxDatabase –Server <ServerName>: - To list the number of mailboxes present in the given server
New-MoveRequest <mailbox> -TargetDatabase <Database-Destination>: - To transfer a mailbox from one database to another using Exchange Admin Center (EAC).
Get-SendConnector | Select Identity –ExpandProperty SourceTransportServers | Where-Object { $_.Name –eq ‘<ServerName>’}: - To verify the send connectors of an organization’s server.
Removing Exchange Server mailbox using GUI
To remove a mailbox server that is not a part of DAG, go to Control Panel
Select Uninstall a program, then select Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 from the drop-down list. Click Uninstall.
The Exchange Server Wizard appears to carry the process forward. Select the default values to ensure uninstallation. In case of errors, the Readiness Checks box will appear to notify them. The administrator must ensure that these errors are mitigated before proceeding to the uninstallation.