Uninstalling Clustered Mailbox Servers

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Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Applies to: Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Exchange Server 2007 SP2, Exchange Server 2007 SP3

Uninstalling a clustered mailbox server (CMS) involves removing the CMS, removing the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 installation from each node in the cluster, and then optionally, decommissioning the cluster that hosted the CMS.

You can uninstall a CMS from either environment by using the command-line interface (Setup.com) or the Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Setup wizard (Setup.exe). The process for uninstalling a CMS in a cluster continuous replication (CCR) environment is similar to uninstalling a CMS in a single copy cluster (SCC). However, there are special considerations for SCCs that contain more than one CMS:

  • You cannot use the Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Setup wizard to remove a CMS from an active node that hosts more than one CMS. In Exchange 2007, a node can simultaneously host more than one CMS; however, at any given time, only one CMS can be brought online. On a node that contains more than one CMS, you must use the command-line version of Setup (Setup.com) to remove a CMS from the node.

  • There is a specific removal order that must be followed. The first CMS installed in the cluster must always be the last CMS that is uninstalled. This order is necessary because, even though the message transfer agent (MTA) instance and functionality has been removed from Exchange 2007, the name of the first CMS that is installed in a failover cluster is still designated as the responsible MTA for itself and every other CMS in the same failover cluster. Therefore, before you can uninstall the first CMS that was installed in an SCC, you must first uninstall all other CMSs that are in the SCC. For detailed steps to determine the first CMS that was installed in the SCC, see How to Determine the First Clustered Mailbox Server Installed in a Single Copy Cluster.

You can use the instructions in the following topics to remove a CMS from a CCR environment or from an SCC, and to decommission the failover cluster: