Uninstalling / Removing Exchange from SBS2003

[MulLa]

Hi all,

I've ordered a Dell server preloaded with MS Small Business Server 2003 for my friend's business. Now I'm trying to preconfigure most things so when I bring it over I could just plug it in, join a few machines to the domain and that's it.

This is the first time that I've actually looked at a SBS server, my previous experience has always been with the seperate windows server + exchange.

This friend doesn't actually need Exchange at the moment so I figured that it would be good in terms of both sercurity and performance to actually switch off Exchange. My question is how on earth do I do that??? There's no component to remove / uninstall / disable the Exchange component.

MS KB isn't much help either. Is there a way to do it or are we stuck with an Exchange server doing nothing at all??


Thanks in advance

 

[djdrastic]

Havent worked with SBS 2003 at all but just taking a random guess , cant you go into CTRL Panel / Add Remove Programs /and click on add/remove ? Then go to components and unchrck Microsoft Exchange Server ? Thats how I used to do it with sbs 2000

 

[mikecel79]

Or if you don't want to uninstall it you can just stop the Exchange Services. Then in the future if they want to use it you just need to enable them.

 

[djdrastic]

Yeah I think stopping the services might actually be a better idea since you wont have to go through the kludgeries of installing again

Just use services.msc and disable all the Microsoft Exchange XXX Services

 

[MulLa]

Havent worked with SBS 2003 at all but just taking a random guess , cant you go into CTRL Panel / Add Remove Programs /and click on add/remove ? Then go to components and unchrck Microsoft Exchange Server ? Thats how I used to do it with sbs 2000

I've tried looking at that but somehow I can't find anything there. Maybe because it's late at night and it sliped passed.

Or if you don't want to uninstall it you can just stop the Exchange Services. Then in the future if they want to use it you just need to enable them.

Would that be alright to do? It did cross my mind once but since Exchange is so tightly intergrated with AD would stopping Exchange like that have any long term effect on the AD?

Thanks for the replies! I'll double check add/remove windows components, and also try disabling services. Heck, it's a new server so I suppose I won't loose much even if I have to rebuild.

 

[spyordie007]

I dont run SBS but I was under the impression that there wasnt a way to uninstall exchange or demote it so it isnt a domain controller. I would ask your question on the MS SBS newsgroups just to be sure; but I think your only option would be to either disable the services or just leave them running and block access to them with a firewall.

-Erik

 

[MulLa]

Thanks for the resource spyordie007.

If it can't be simply disabled (don't really feel comfortable disabling things like Exchange via Services) I guess I'll just have to block appropriate ports via the firewall plus use IPsec on the server to block out local access too.

 

[MetroRider]

Actually, the Exchange services can be disabled, but as you mentioned, don't leave ports 25 and 110 open on your firewall, and you will be fine.

-MetroRider