Forum Discussion
Decommission Skype 2015 On-Prem servers
I want to decommission our Skype On-Prem (2015) servers and cleanup AD from the RTC delegations and groups (RTC* and CS*). I've been following the guide: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/hybrid/decommission-remove-on-prem
However, when doing step 1 of "Prepare to remove the Skype for Business deployment" and run the commands, the command Get-CsAudioTestServiceApplication returns an object. In step 2 there is no corresponding Remove-cmdlet, so we tried disabling it with the Set-cmdlet.
Moving on to "Remove your on-premises Skype for Business deployment", when getting to step 3 I run "Publish-CsTopology -FinalizeUninstall" but gets the following error.
Publish-CsTopology : Command execution failed: Cannot publish topology changes. Users or contacts are still homed on a pool that would be deleted. Move or remove the users or contacts before continuing.
At line:1 char:1
+ Publish-CsTopology -FinalizeUninstall
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (:) [Publish-CsTopology], Inva
lidOperationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ProcessingFailed,Microsoft.Rtc.Management.Deploy
ment.PublishTopologyCmdlet
Running the command generates a html file with the result, where the same error can be found and the following suggestion:
"UserPoolInUseResolution: Consult your Skype for Business Server documentation to learn how to move or disable objects still homed on the pool. To find those objects, execute the following cmdLets: Get-CsUser, Get-CsExUmContact, Get-CsCommonAreaPhone, Get-CsAnalogDevice, Get-CsRgsWorkflow, Get-CsDialInConferencingAccessNumber, Get-CsAudioTestServiceApplication, Get-CsTrustedApplicationEndpoint, Get-CsPersistentChatEndpoint."
So I'm guessing we need to get rid of that Audio Test Service Application, anyone got any ideas how to do that? I can't find anything for it in the GUI either.
The main objective is to clean up any remnents in AD, the entire Skype environment will be removed and all servers decommissioned. I'm guessing that the Disable-CsAdDomain and Disable-CsAdForest cmdlets does this somewhat. Is the above steps a requirement to be able to run these cmdlets, or would this be a viable option?
3 Replies
Nicholas Hay thanks for the reply, I forgot I posted this here. Would you mind saying where in ADSI you removed the audio test service application?
Anyway, we also raised a ticket with MS Support but as we did not have paid support we first got the reply that they couldn't help us. Unexpectedly, a manager got in touch and basically said we probably could go ahead with running Disable-CSADDomain och Disable-CSADForest anyway, adding:
"I really do think that unless you intention is to remove the remaining stale objects from the skype of business installation, you should go through with running the remaining commands. You should only consider raising the PAID support ticket with Skype for Business team if you encounter error while now running these commands."
So we went ahead anyway, so if you could let me know where in ADSI you removed them I can verify if they remain for us.
We did however run into some other issues with those commands too, which we managed to resolve and I sent back the following to the MS manager in hope it could help someone else so I'll post them here just in case:
- When running Disable-CsAdDomain, we got the error “Cannot remove the active directory settings for the domain due to ‘FE’ still being activated”. This was due to the Front End server still being AD joined and when checking with ADSIEdit we could see that the AD computer object had some sub objects, my guess is that the command went looking for these. So in order to fix this, we had to remove the AD-object and install the Powershell module and Management tools somewhere else with AD connectivity. After doing this, the step could be run without issue. This site was of help: https://appcentric.com.au/2020/12/09/disable-csadforest-cannot-remove-the-active-directory-settings-for-the-domain-due-to-fe-still-be-activated/3/
- When above command finished successfully, we ran Disable-CsAdForest and got lots of warnings that the “groups” weren’t ready. This was probably due to AD replication wasn’t finished, so after waiting a little bit we re-ran the command and all warnings were gone except for two, and no matter how long we waited we got the same 2 warnings. After not finding much on this issue we re-ran the command with –Force parameter and this seem to have solved the issue, no more warnings after that.
- I came across this site which was very helpful, and it sort of explains what things the above commands actually remove: https://expertslab.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/remove-lync-server-from-active-directory/
- AD groups, such as CSAdministrator etc, were removed.
- AD ACE/Delegations, such as RTCUniversalServerReadOnlyGroup, were removed.
- Service Connection Points, such as RTC Services, were removed.
- Another thing we had to remove manually (besides the FE Machine Account) was the LyncCertificates “folder” (container) in the forest domain; Program Data -> Microsoft -> Distributed KeyMan -> LyncCertificates.
Finally fixed the issue as we had to go into ADSI and delete the 2 Audio Test Service Application as that cleared our error and allowed us to finish the -uninstall command as shown at https://blog.icewolf.ch/archive/2021/05/19/decommission-skype-for-business-on-premises/
We are having this same issue you did. Did you find a solution yet as we are working with 2 vendors and I started a support case with Microsoft on this issue?
