Decommissioning Exchange 2016 Server

By AJ Bajada

I have created many labs over the years and never really spent the time to decommission my environment, I usually just blow it away and start again. So I finally decided to go through the process and decommission my Exchange 2016 server in my lab environment.

My lab consisted of the following:

• Domain Controller (Windows Server 2012 R2)
• AAD Connect Server
• Exchange 2016 Server/ Office 365 Hybrid
• Office 365 tenant

Being a lab I only had one Exchange server which had the mailbox role configured and was also my hybrid server.

Proceed with the steps below to remove the Exchange Online configuration;

1. Connect to Exchange Online using PowerShell

2. Remove the Inbound connector

Remove-InboundConnector -Identity "Inbound from [Inbound Connector ID]"

3. Remove the Outbound connector

Remove-OutboundConnector -Identity "Outbound to [Outbound Connector ID]"

4. Remove the Office 365 federation

Remove-OrganizationRelationship "O365 to On-premises - [Org Relationship ID]"

5. Remove the OAuth configuration

Remove-IntraOrganizationConnector -Identity "HybridIOC - [Intra Org Connector ID]"

Now connect to your Exchange 2016 server and conduct the following;

1. Open Exchange Management Shell
2. Remove the Hybrid Config

Remove-HybridConfig

3. Remove the federation configuration

Remove-OrganizationRelationship "On-premises to O365 - [Org Relationship ID]"

4. Remove OAuth configuration

Remove-IntraorganizationConnector -Identity "HybridIOC - [Intra Org Connector ID]"

5. Remove all mailboxes, mailbox databases, public folders etc.
6. Uninstall Exchange (either via PowerShell or programs and features)

Setup /Mode:Uninstall /iacceptexchangeserverlicenseterms

7. Decommission server

I also confirmed Exchange was removed from Active Directory and I was able to run another installation of Exchange on the same Active Directory with no conflicts or issues.