Remove your on-premises Skype for Business deployment

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Important

Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet in China will be retired on October 1, 2023. If you haven't upgraded your Skype for Business Online users yet, they will be automatically scheduled for an assisted upgrade. If you want to upgrade your organization to Teams yourself, we strongly recommend that you begin planning your upgrade path today. Remember that a successful upgrade aligns technical and user readiness, so be sure to leverage our upgrade guidance as you navigate your journey to Teams.

Skype for Business Online, excluding the service operated by 21Vianet in China, was retired on July 31, 2021.

This article describes how to remove your on-premises Skype for Business deployment. This is step 4 of the following steps to decommission your on-premises environment:

Important

The steps in this article apply only if you are using Method 2 for managing user attributes, as described here. If you are using Method 1, do not use the steps described in this article to remove your Skype for Business servers. Instead, you can re-image the servers.

To complete the steps in this article, you need privileges for both the Schema Admins group and the Enterprise Admin group. You'll need these privileges to undo the Skype for Business Server schema and forest-level changes to Active Directory Domain Services. You will also need to be a member of the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group.

Prepare to remove the Skype for Business deployment

After you move all required user accounts to the cloud, there may still be some remaining on-premises objects such as contacts and applications that you will need clean up.

Use the steps below to clean these objects, and make sure you're a member of both the Local Administrator group and the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group. Note that ExUmContacts and PersistantChatEndPoints aren't available in Skype for Business Server 2019. If you have Skype for Business Server 2019, the corresponding cmdlets in the steps below should be omitted.

  1. To check if there are any contacts or applications associated with the Skype for Business Server on-premises deployment, run the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlets.

    Get-CsMeetingRoom
Get-CsCommonAreaPhone
Get-CsAnalogDevice
Get-CsExUmContact
Get-CsDialInConferencingAccessNumber
Get-CsRgsWorkflow
Get-CsTrustedApplicationEndpoint
Get-CsTrustedApplication
Get-CsPersistentChatEndpoint
Get-CsAudioTestServiceApplication
Get-CsCallParkOrbit
Get-CsUnassignedNumber

  2. Review the output lists from the cmdlets in Step 1. Then if objects can be removed, run the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlets:

    Get-CsMeetingRoom | Disable-CsMeetingRoom
Get-CsCommonAreaPhone | Remove-CsCommonAreaPhone 
Get-CsAnalogDevice | Remove-CsAnalogDevice
Get-CsExUmContact | Remove-CsExUmContact
Get-CsDialInConferencingAccessNumber | Remove-CsDialInConferencingAccessNumber
Get-CsRgsWorkflow | Remove-CsRgsWorkflow
Get-CsTrustedApplicationEndpoint | Remove-CsTrustedApplicationEndpoint
Get-CsTrustedApplication | Remove-CsTrustedApplication -Force
Get-CsPersistentChatEndpoint |  Remove-CsPersistentChatEndpoint
Get-CsCallParkOrbit | Remove-CsCallParkOrbit -Force
Get-CsVoiceRoute | Remove-CsVoiceRoute -Force
Get-CsUnassignedNumber | Remove-CsUnassignedNumber -Force

Remove your on-premises Skype for Business deployment

After completing all the preliminary steps, you can remove the Skype for Business deployment by following these steps:

  1. Logically remove the Skype for Business Server deployment, except for a single front end, as follows:

    1. Update your Skype for Business Server topology to have a single front-end pool:

      1. In Topology Builder, download a new copy and navigate to the Frontend pool.
      2. Right-click the pool, and then select Edit Properties.
      3. In Associations, uncheck Associate Edge Pool (for media components) and click OK.
      4. If there's more than one Frontend Pool, remove Associations for all remaining pools.
      5. Select Action > Remove Deployment.
      6. Select Action > Publish Topology.

    2. After publishing the topology, complete the additional steps described in the wizard.

  2. Remove Skype for Business Server conference directories by running the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlet:

    Get-CsConferenceDirectory | Remove-CsConferenceDirectory -Force

  3. Finalize the uninstall of your Skype for Business Server deployment by running the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlet:

    Publish-CsTopology -FinalizeUninstall

    Note

    If this step returns an error, please open a Microsoft support ticket to get help removing the remaining stale objects.

  4. Remove Central Management Store Service Control Point by running the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlet:

    Remove-CsConfigurationStoreLocation

  5. Undo Skype for Business Server Active Directory domain-level changes by running the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlet:

    Disable-CsAdDomain

  6. Undo Skype for Business Server Active Directory forest-level changes by running the following Skype for Business Server PowerShell cmdlet:

    Disable-CsAdForest

See also