Cleaning Up Exchange 2003 Remnants, Part 2

In the previous article in this series, I talked about the importance of removing the routing group connectors prior to removing the last legacy Exchange Server from an organization. In this article, I want to conclude the series by showing you how to remove a routing group connector, and how to redirect the Recipient Update Service.

Removing Routing Group Connectors

Before you can remove the last Exchange 2003 server from your Exchange organization, you have to remove the routing group connector that connects your Exchange 2003 routing group to the Exchange 2007 routing group. The easiest way to accomplish this task is to use the Exchange System Manager.

To do so, open the Exchange System Manager and navigate through the console tree to Administrative Groups | your administrative group | Routing Groups | First Routing Group | Connectors, as shown in Figure A. Now, simply right-click on the routing group connector and choose the Delete command from the shortcut menu. You will have to repeat this process for any other routing group connectors that may still exist.

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Figure A Right-click on a routing group connector, and choose the delete command to remove it.

You also have the option of using the Exchange Management Shell to get rid of any remaining routing group connectors. To do so, you would use the Remove-RoutingGroupConnector command. The syntax for this command is:

 ​Remove-RoutingGroupConnector –Identity <routing group connector> [-confirm [<switch parameter>]] [-DomainController <domain 

controller’s fully qualified domain name]

It can be a little bit tricky to use this command, but when you do the actual command that you type will usually look something like this:

​Remove-RoutingGroupConnector -Identity "Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)\Exchange Routing Group (DWBGZMFD01QNBJR)\Ex2007 to Ex2003 RGC" 

-DomainController dc1.contoso.com

You can see a much more detailed explanation of how to use this command here.

Redirecting the Recipient Update Service

Another task that you will have to complete as a part of decommissioning your final Exchange 2003 server is to redirect the Recipient Update Service. Exchange Server 2007 does not even use the Recipient Update Service, but you must redirected it before you will be able to uninstall Exchange Server 2003.

The process of redirecting the Recipient Update Service is fairly simple. Begin the process by opening the Exchange System Manager, and then navigate through the console tree to Recipient | Recipient Update Service. When you do, the details pane should display two separate listings for the Recipient Update Service. One of these listings refers to the Enterprise Configuration, and the other refers to the individual domain. You can see an example of this in Figure B.

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Figure B There should be two separate listings for the Recipient Update Service.

At this point, you should right-click on the Recipient Update Service (Enterprise Configuration) object, and choose the Properties command from the shortcut menu. When you do, Windows will display the Recipient Update Service (Enterprise Configuration) Properties sheet.

As you can see in Figure C, this property sheet contains a listing for a specific Exchange server. Click the Browse button next to the Exchange server, and you will be given the opportunity to enter the name of another Exchange server. Enter the name of an Exchange 2007 server, and click the Check Names button to verify the existence of the server that you have specified. Assuming that the name is resolved correctly, click OK.

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Figure C Click the Browse button located next to the Exchange Server.

Click OK again to close the Recipient Update Service (Enterprise Configuration) Properties sheet. You must now repeat the procedure, but this time on the domain level instance of the Recipient Update Service. When you’re done, right-click on the Recipient Update Service (Enterprise Configuration) object, and choose the Update Now command from the shortcut menu. I also recommend updating the domain level instance of the Recipient Update Service in this same way.

Conclusion

You should now be able to successfully uninstall Exchange Server 2003. When the process completes, I strongly recommend verifying that external SMTP mail is still flowing. If not, then you may not have updated your DNS MX record to point to the appropriate Exchange 2007 server.

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