We migrated from locally hosted Exchange (2013) to Exchange Online approximately half a year ago. After completing the migration, we powered down our local Exchange server for a settling in period. Now 6 months later and confident the local Exchange server is no longer necessary, I am ready to remove it completely. However, I'm a bit unclear on the right steps to take.
On one hand, since this server is no longer in use, I would expect that I could remove it following these steps: https://digitalbamboo.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/remove-the-exchange-2013-mailbox-role-and-exchange-from-your-server/ However, on the very first step, I get the following prompt which makes me hesitant to continue: [PS] C:\Windows\system32>get-user | disable-mailbox Confirm Are you sure you want to perform this action? Disabling mailbox "MailboxName" will remove the Exchange properties from the Active Directory user object and mark the mailbox in the database for removal. If the mailbox has an archive or remote archive, the archive will also be marked for removal. In the case of remote archives, this action is permanent. You can't reconnect this user to the remote archive again. [Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All [?] Help (default is "Y"): While we are no longer using local Exchange, we do use Azure AD Sync so this message could be relevant. With this consideration in mind, I also found the following instructions: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn931280(v=exchg.150).aspx However, we are not running a hybrid deployment so I'm unclear how applicable this article is. In short, does anybody have experience removing the local Exchange server after having transitioned to Exchange Online? Thanks very much! Best, Dan
