Hi everyone,
Hope you can help... A small story on this first :)
4 years ago we migrated our emails from 2010 Exchange server totally into the Microsoft cloud Office365 (no premise server on site). We used Directsync to sync between our AD DCs to the O365.
After all the emails, when a consulting firm check into our system to implement some security features on O365, they figured out our Exchange server did not decommission correctly. What our Exchange admin just did was just "unplug" the network cable of the servers from the network instead of uninstalling it. (And the original hardware that hosted the Exchange server got wiped out. ) When the consultant works on the o365 security, now he can still find some old Exchange old attributes in our AD. Our AD currently is still running on 2003 mode even though we have only windows 2008 and 2012 Domain controllers running.
I would like to ask:
1.) Should I do a clean up to remove the old Exchange attributes from our Active Directory? Currently we do not have any errors or problems at all. Is it very necessary? Let's say...we will not implement in house Exchange server any more?
2.) If we keep the old attributes, would there be any risk for the future...eg: upgrade to 2012 domain level or even 2016 level (if exist...or even something I could not think of at this point)
3.) If #1 is recommended, what should I do to remove the attributes from our AD? May you tell me step by steps?
4.) Currently I would like to upgrade my forest and domain level from 2003 to 2008 (again, I do not have any 2003 domain controllers)..may I do this with the old Exchange attritubes around? We would like to upgrade our desktop to Win10 so we would like to get a GPO structure to support that..
Add on question :)... when I raise the domain and forest level, which one should I raise the level first?
Thank you very much for your help
Takami Chiro