Decommissioning old virtuals....

R.O.S.S.I

R.O.S.S.I

R.O.S.S.I

Soldato
Joined
16 Nov 2002
Posts
11,290
Location
The Moon
Hi all, we had a big virtualisation project not long ago turning everything we had into virtual servers but at the same time creating new servers to replace them.

Now at the moment we've got several servers on our ESX host, and i've had 2 of them turned off for a good 3-4 months. One is our old Exchange 2007 box (as we've gone up to 2010 now), and the other is our old file-server and domain controller (these have now been split onto 2 new separate VM's).

Is it just as simple as scrapping the VM's in the vSphere Client? Or is there a standard decommissioning process to follow? My understanding is that if these machines have been off for the past 3-4 months then they obviously aren't (and can't) being used in our infrastructure.

The only time I had to turn one of them on was when I had an issue with some people logging on with roaming profiles and it couldn't copy their profile from the old server to the new one. That was resolved quickly just by turning the machine on and letting it copy them across, and its been turned off straight after.

So my question is - Do I delete the VM's that have been off for a few months? Or is there a more standard procedure to take with this sort of thing?
 
for domain controller,you would have to dcpromo (to demote it from a DC to file server)

If a domain controller hasnt been on for ages, it will be tombstoned (default 60days)

though you can google instructions in order to remove the domain controller without powering on the server (so it removes all reference from AD)
 
nickcardwell said:
for domain controller,you would have to dcpromo (to demote it from a DC to file server)

If a domain controller hasnt been on for ages, it will be tombstoned (default 60days)

though you can google instructions in order to remove the domain controller without powering on the server (so it removes all reference from AD)
Click to expand...

The old DC was dcpromo'd and demoted then the new one was brought online. The old server doesnt have that role on it anymore so would it still be an issue? It's literally just an old file server now.
 
martynbez said:
Well if it's power off in the VM I would have thought you would have had issues by now.
Click to expand...

Exactly, so am I right in thinking I can just delete the VM's?

Like I said, one is an old Exchange 2007 box, and the other is now basically just the old file server.

I just thought there might have been other things to take into consideration.
 
I trust you decomissioned the old Exchange 2007 + DC servers out of the domain properly?

If you have followed Microsofts advice on that, rather than just turning them off and leaving them then you've done well. Lots of things can be left over in AD if you don't. I doubt it'd cause problems later on but later down the line but it is a possibility.

That being said, if you've done it all properly shouldn't be an issue.

If it were me, I'd browse the datastores and take a copy of the folder with all the VMDK/VMX/Logs and leave it on some filestore somewhere for the next 6 months. That's just me being cautious though. Once that's done - just delete it from the VMware inventory and from the disk.
 
Ill boot them up with no NIC's enabled tomorrow and remove the Exchange software off it itself as per MS's guidance, then I'll the remove all the roles and features installed on them so they're as back to scratch as possible!

Then i'll bin them!
 
There's not much point uninstalling Exchange if it's already off the network!

The uninstallation is supposed to clear up AD of its server containers and references to itself. I've only decommissioned Exchange 2003 servers so far and there was lots of little reconfigurations done during the uninstall process, at the end of it you're left with an old Exchange storage group that should be empty (and not deleted according to MS).
 
If they haven't be connected to the network for a while and you have backups of any data on the VM's then there shouldn't be any issue in completely removing them.

Although i tend to archive old/decommissioned VMs - make note of any settings (IPs/MAC addresses, VM settings), backup the VM, then remove it from VMWare/disk.
 
Generally I will archive them off using veeamzip unless the project manager or VM owner is 100% certain they will never need it again.
 
As said, with Exchange ideally you want to run the uninstaller which removes any references to itself from AD. If it's been off for months though it's not going to auth to the domain so there's little point. You can remove it manually if it ever starts causing problems.
 
Caged said:
As said, with Exchange ideally you want to run the uninstaller which removes any references to itself from AD. If it's been off for months though it's not going to auth to the domain so there's little point. You can remove it manually if it ever starts causing problems.
Click to expand...

Member servers have no issue being offline for months/years. Their computer account password will have expired but as Windows boots it will just create a new one. Even if it didn't just shove the server in a workgroup and add it back to the domain to resolve.

Just boot the Exchange up and uninstall it. The old DC has already been demoted so no need to worry about that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom