Decommissioning Exchange servers

[Ed_Jackson]

We built a new Exchange 2003 server, to replace an older Exchange 2003  server. All mailboxes were moved from the old server to the new one. Per Document ID 286709, I need to run a sql script against the  exchangemailboxentry table that shows all active mailboxes on the old  server (exchangeserveridentity = 1). If all mailboxes are off of it, the  script should return zip. But, what I get are  entries for each mailbox that I moved. The entries have the identity of the old server (1), and a LegacyMbxDN something like:

 (MARKED @ 12:02:39 06/08/07) /o=American Tower/ou=Cary/cn=Recipients/  cn=Donald.Duck for all moved mailboxes. There is another entry showing the correct DN, and the server identity of the new server (15). I'm assuming that a sync run will remove the old entries, but that has not happened. According to the document, I need to get all mailboxes referencing the old server out, before removing the Exchange server from EV.

I also have entries for oldmailboxes that were deleted from the Exchange server many moons ago.

My questions are:

Is it OK to remove the Exchange server from EV anyway?

What process and time frame should take the old entries out of the SQL database table?

Is there a work-around to remove the entries (manual delete?)?

Am I seriously hosed??

EV 6, SP3

Thank you.

Ed

[TonySterling]

Ed,

You will be happy to know you are not seriously hosed! :)

Yes it is okay to remove an Old Exchange Server.  The entries you are seeing are there because EV has tracked the mailbox move from the old exchange server to the new.

[MarkBarefoot]

You can clear the legacy entries by using a SQL delete:-

USE EnterpriseVaultDirectory

DELETE ExchangeMailboxEntry

WHERE LegacyMbxDN LIKE '%MARKED@%'

Prior to the delete you could use SELECT * FROM to check it's going to delete what you think it will.

Mark