uninstall SBS 2008 from domain

My broadstroke steps to uninstall SBS 2008 from my domain.

1. delete all offline address books in EMC
2. delete all public folders with these two PowerShell commands: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201664(v=exchg.140).aspx
3. Disable and then purge all user mailboxes (you do not delete mailboxes as this also deletes the active directory accounts as well)
   a. You do not delete mailboxes, but rather you go to recipient configuration -> mailbox in EMC and highlight all mailboxes and choose "disable"
   b. You'll see all the mailboxes go to the disconnected mailboxes section
   c. Now, you run these two commands to purge the mailboxes in an elevated Exchange Shell:
   d. $users = Get-MailboxStatistics | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | Select DisplayName,MailboxGuid
   e. $users | ForEach { Remove-Mailbox -Database "Mailbox Database" -StoreMailboxIdentity $_.MailboxGuid -confirm:$false }
   f. Credit for those two commands goes here: http://www.geekyprojects.com/microsoft-server-tutorials/how-to-purge-or-delete-a-disconnected-mailbox-in-exchange-2007/
4. Uninstall Exchange (required following several KBs with steps on deleting things like OAB, user mailboxes, public folders, send connectors, etc)
5. Transfer the 5 FSMO roles to a new domain controller with the global catalog role via these steps
6. Remove Active Directory Certificate Services
7. Demote the SBS server
8. Remove the SBS server from the domain (put in a workgroup)
9. Disable and/or remove WSUS from group policy via these steps

IMPORTANT NOTE - When I did a dcpromo to demote my SBS 2008, it somehow broke my DFS namespace even though the SBS 2008 server was *not* the host of this namespace.  I ended up having to create a new namespace after I had demoted the SBS server.  This is definitely something to check on future SBS uninstallations.

sending spam to junk email folder on Exchange 2007/2010

When configuring actions on detected spam on Exchange 2007 and 2010, there is no option to send it to the junk email folder when configuring it on the EMC. This is absurd. It looks like this (shown here are the actions on the content filter):



As stupid as it is, the way you can configure an SCL to be sent to the junk e-mail folder is through the PowerShell.

This command will send all junk with an SCL of 4 or higher to junk e-mail:

Set-OrganizationConfig -SCLJunkThreshold 4

I put this command on all my Exchange servers. I also disable all outright rejection of spam. Users hate it when legitimate email gets rejected. All spam goes into the junk email folder.


More info on this issue is located here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738127(v=exchg.80).aspx

adding anti-spam features to single server Exchange 2010

I built a single Exchange 2010 box, as opposed to one with an edge server - and there were not anti-spam features present. Normally, you'd find the anti-spam features in edge transport in the Exchange Management Console (EMC).

But since there is no edge transport server, you can add the anti-spam functionality (so that it appears in Organization Configuration -> Hub transport and some in Server Configuration -> Hub transport. In each case, there's an anti-spam tab.

To add it, enter these commands:

1. Run the following command from the %system drive%/Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts folder.

./install-AntispamAgents.ps1

2. After the script has run, restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport service by running the following command.

Restart-Service MSExchangeTransport