Decommissioning Skype for Business 2015 on premise after migrating to O365
Skype For Business
Frank -
4:09 PM

Depending on how you utilise Skype for Business, you may have no requirement to maintain a hybrid environment once all users are within Skype for Business online.

Documentation around decommissioning the on premise environment was surprisingly sparse.

One of the better documents around web was here – but it still stopped a little short, in my opinion.

So below is my attempt at rounding this process out.

 

All steps below assume you have already migrated all users to Skype for business and that you are aware of the requirements to stay in hybrid depending on your EV setup. If you are unsure, do not start this process.

 

Step 1 – Update DNS entries

This document really nails the DNS changes required, so good work Mark Vale. I am going to paraphrase the article a little, just so it’s all in one place.

Depending on your environment, you have a fair idea of idea of how long you need to wait externally and internally for convergence. This will lead to downtime, so it is wise to perform this outside of business hours.

Its also wise to take a backup of your existing values, just in case.

External DNS changes

 

Internal DNS changes

after completing these updated, check via the O365 portal that O365 is reporting the Skype DNS entries as all good. I find this is generally pretty quick, so I assume that the source DNS server is used for DNS record checks and it doesn’t have to wait for convergence.

 

Step 2 – Check functionality

After an appropriate convergence time, check that all functionality is working before moving on to further steps.

Again, this depends on the size of your environment and your internal and external DNS configuration.

Marks post has a couple of scripts you can run if you wish to speed up the process internally.

 

Step 3 – Disable Shared SIP Address Space

Ensure you have the Skype for business powershell module

  • Import-Module LyncOnlineConnector
  • $credential = Get-Credential “<yourSkypeForBusinessAdminAccount”
  • $session = New-CsOnlineSession -Credential $credential
  • Import-PSSession $session
  • Set-CsTenantFederationConfiguration –SharedSipAddressSpace $false

 

Step 4 – Uninstall on premise components

On one of your home servers

  • Open the Skype for Business server control panel or PowerShell (whichever way you prefer)
    • Remove all objects possible (see Phase 3 of this document). These will vary greatly, so I have not listed all of the things to remove, but let me know if you are having trouble with one.
  • Open the Skype of Business topology manager
    • Download your existing topology
    • Remove configuration and components to allow you to strip the environment bare
      • Remove global routes to your edge servers, which will allow the edge servers to be removed
      • Remove application servers
      • Remove any configuration pointing to your mediation servers, then remove them
      • Remove persistent chant pools
      • Remove everything you can, which will be everything except the last server where your CSS is stored (if running standard)
    • Publish the topology
      • Run Skype for Business Server Deployment wizard on the edge and mediation (if this is co-located, there will not be additional mediation servers) servers, and allow it to remove all roles
      • These servers can now be switched off
  • Open the Skype of Business topology manager
    • Download your existing topology
    • Now when right clicking on your final server, if you to “topology” you will have an option of “Remove Deployment”
    • Select this and publish your topology again
  • Open Skype for business management shell
    • Get-CsConferenceDirectory | Remove-CsConferenceDirectory -Force
    • Publish-CsTopology -FinalizeUninstall
    • Run C:\Program Files\Skype for Business Server 2015\Deployment\bootstrapper.exe /scorch
    • Remove-CsConfigurationStoreLocation
    • Disable-CsAdDomain (This will remove the RTC groups from your AD permissions structure)
    • Disable-CsAdForest ((This will remove the CS* groups from your AD)
    • I found once this had completed, a couple of RTC groups still existed under the “users” container. This is likely due to the fact that the domain has hosted versions of Lync/OCS etc. sync LCS 2005. I deleted these manually.
  • Once this was completed, shut down your last Skype for business server on premise.
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