Good Morning all! I wanted to get some feedback on the appropriate way to remove an Exchange server name from Active Directory Here are some details: 1. I have setup in our main production site CCR (Windows Server 2003 Ent and Exch 07 SP1) 2. At the DR Site in a remote office we had setup SCR ==> CCR Node 1 is the SCR Source and of course we had another server at DR Site as SCR Target (Windows Server 2003 and Exch 07 SP1) 3. At some point, SCR target server crashed so bad that we had to rebuild the server by re-installing OS and Exchange. When re-installing the OS we used the same server name we used before the server crashed. During the Exchange2007 installation of the SCR Target server, the system recognized that the server name already existed in Active Directory and would allow the setup to continue. Since we did not have too much time to deal with this at that point, we re-named the server name, rebooted and attempted to install Exchange again. This time the Exchange 07 SP1 installation went well. At that point we were able to setup again SCR and things have been working ok since then 4. As you can imagine, the older Exch server name (used before the server crashed) still remains in Active Directory and it shows up in the Exchange Management Console under Servers 5. We want to delete the old Exchange server name from AD so that it does not show up in the Exchange Management Console anymore. Most of the information out there point to use ADSIEDIT to remove the old Exchange server name from AD. I just want to make sure this is the right thing to do Can someone please provide some advice in this regard? Thanks in advance for your help!

Unlike Exchange 2003, manual removal of Exchange 2007 is not supported. However, take a look at these threads.. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exrca/thread/b365aa9b-350f-481a-9222-9e5595946da8 http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvrgeneral/thread/412e2904-839f-4960-970d-6ee281d1d50a http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/927464?p=1 Santhosh Sivarajan | MCTS, MCSE (W2K3/W2K/NT4), MCSA (W2K3/W2K/MSG), CCNA, Network+ Houston, TX http://blogs.sivarajan.com/ http://publications.sivarajan.com/ This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Santhosh, Thanks so much for your advice. I greatly appreciate it! I ended up using ADSIEDIT to delete the "orphan" exhange server name from AD. Basically, I opened up ADSIEDIT and when the following path: CN=Configuration, DC= Domain_Name ,DC=com, CN=Services, CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN= <Organization_Name>, CN=Administrative Groups, CN= Exchange Administrative Group (AGname), CN=Servers, CN=<Server Name> Source: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exrca/thread/b365aa9b-350f-481a-9222-9e5595946da8 After deleting the "orphan" exhange server name from AD and after replication occured, the "orphan" exhange server was gone from the other DCs and when we launched Exchange Management Console the "orphan" exhange server was gone as well. So mission accomplished. So far things seemd to be ok. If something happens out of hte orninary, I'll make sure to post the results here so other people looking into the same solution can learn from this This are other links I visited during this research: Removing Orphan Exchange 2007 Server http://www.petri.co.il/forums/showthread.php?t=22128 removing exchange server 2007 from the active directory http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/removing-exchange-server-2007-from-the-active-directory/ How to completely remove a Exchange server or the entire Exchange organization http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Remove-Exchange-server-entire-Exchange-organization.html How to delete old exchange server from AD http://www.petri.co.il/forums/showthread.php?t=1829 Thanks so much and please keep up the great work you do in this blog. Thanks for sharing your valuable knowledge with the Exchange Community Regards, FT