How to remove an EV Server from your site

How to remove an EV Server from your site

There may come a time where you want to decommission or remove an EV Server from your environment.  This has come up a few times on the Forum so I decided to document the steps to help you avoid the pitfalls of not doing it correctly. 

Before doing anything BACKUP ALL EV DATABASES!!

Step 1: Move all the existing Targets, Indexes, and Vault Stores to a new EV Server
There are several technotes to assist with this and for convenience I have listed them here:
How to move the Index location to a different Enterprise Vault (EV) server in the same site.
http://support.veritas.com/docs/288432

How to move a Vault Store and Vault Store partition to a different Enterprise Vault (EV) server in the SAME site.
http://support.veritas.com/docs/282880

I could not find a technote about moving an Exchange Target, but the process is pretty simple.  Just delete the current task and create a new on the new EV Server. 
For FSA you would simply select a new Task in the Volume Properties tab. You will also need to choose new Tasks for Public Folders, Sharepoint, and Journaling. This can be done on the properties page of the respective targets.

Step 2: Remove all the task and services that remain
For any Task’s that remain simply stop them and right click and choose delete.  For Public Folder tasks, Sharepoint tasks, Journaling tasks, and FSA tasks all the targets associated with them will have to be reassigned before you can delete them.
For Services, make sure they are stopped and right click Services under the EV Server in the Vault Admin Console.

 
You will then see a screen like this.
 

Simply highlight the Service and choose delete.

You might have to make an adjustment in SQL if the services do not delete on the first try. 

For example, for Indexing you would want to put something in the Admin Note of the Index Service like "Delete Me" and close the Admin Console. 
Then open the IndexingServiceEntry table in SQL and set IndexingCanDelete = 1.
Putting the Admin note entry will allow you to easily identify the service you want to delete.

Step 3: Delete the EV Server from the Vault Admin Console

To do this just right click the EV Server and choose Delete.  That should be it. 

I put this together using my lab images so if you run into any issues let me know as the document might need to be adjusted to take into account variables that are not present in my lab.

Best regards,
Tony