I know there is no supported method to manually remove an Exchange 2010 server by Microsoft, but it has to be able to be done. I have an Exchange 2010 server that has crashed and has no data on it and I do not want to rebuild the whole thing just to go through the Microsoft supported method to remove it. I want to use the ADSI editor and remove all traces of this specific server. We do have other Exchange 2010 servers that are in production. I just want to remove this one specific server. Anyone done this before?Network Touch

Several people, apparently. If you look at "Related Topics" to the right of this column (to the right of these posts, this conversation), there are a number of links on this subject. This one in particular: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/zh/exchangesvrmigration/thread/0d45d6d3-6c85-489a-a78e-d73acfd6a63e You already know it's not supported so I won't insist on that point.Please mark as helpful if you find my contribution useful or as an answer if it does answer your question. That will encourage me - and others - to take time out to help you.

So the same basic method as Exchange 2003 ? Follow below and remove the computer account. That is it? I would have thought there would have been more to it than that. At this point only using adsiedit same instructions even for sbs. Click Start, run type ADSI Edit. Expand the following items: Configuration Container CN=Configuration, DC=<var>Domain_Name</var>,DC=com CN=Services CN=Microsoft Exchange CN=<var>Your_Organization_Name</var> CN=Administrative Groups CN=<var>Your_Administrative_Group_Name</var> <var></var>CN=Servers Right-click and delete serverNetwork Touch

Right, almost seems too easy. I'm guessing (and only guessing) that there *might* be references to it on other servers if it held a Public Folder replica, was a DAG member, or something like that. The official install method would probably deal with those references better than if you just delete a single entry with ADSIEdit. Please mark as helpful if you find my contribution useful or as an answer if it does answer your question. That will encourage me - and others - to take time out to help you.

I would highly recommend against this. Go through the supported method - for no other reason than it will give you some good practice at DR.:) Why? well, you may find down the road that some rollup or SP fails simply because you have a remnant of some server that can't be resolved or it was linked to some policy or array value etc...

Hi You had better by support way. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee332361.aspx If it is just labr environment, you can do test and read this blog. If it is not lab environment, please recover broken server and remove it. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876880.aspx TechNet Subscriber Supportin forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.comTerence Yu TechNet Community Support

So if I use the /m:recoverserver, it says I must setup the same drive letters. I do not know anything about the original server except the computer name. Will that be a problem? So just run the /m:recoverserver, then when it is done, add/remove programs and remove exchange? That is it? Any gotchas or other items I should be concerned about?Network Touch

Yeppers. Recover the server, then remove with Add/Remove Programs. If there are any mailboxes still pointing to the database or other issues, it should flag that when you run the uninstall routine.

Is there any way to tell what version of Exchange 2010 the server was running or does it even matter since all I am doing is recovering the server, then removing it?Network Touch

get-exchangeserver |fl will do itNetwork Touch