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Remove a server from the farm

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Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

This Office product will reach end of support on October 10, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see , Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

Topic Last Modified: 2008-08-04

In this article:

  • Remove a Web server or an application server from a farm by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel

  • Remove any kind of server from a farm by using Central Administration

There are three types of servers in a server farm running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Web servers, application servers, and database servers.

You can remove a Web server or an application server from the server farm by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel to uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007. If a server that appears to be part of the farm is no longer available, or if uninstalling Office SharePoint Server 2007 from the server is not possible, remove the server from the farm by using the SharePoint Central Administration Web site. Removing a server from Central Administration does not uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007 on that server, nor make any sites on that server inaccessible.

To remove a database server from a farm, you must first move any databases that are hosted by that server to another database server in the farm. You can then use Central Administration to remove the database server. For more information about how to migrate databases, see Move to another farm (Office SharePoint Server 2007).

Membership in the Farm Administrators group and the Administrators group on the local server computer is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

Remove a Web server or an application server from a farm by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel

We recommend that you uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007, instead of using Central Administration to remove Web servers and application servers from a farm. When you uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007, you remove the program files and other information from the server. Removing the server from the farm by using Central Administration does not delete this information from the server.

Important

If you uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007 from the server that is running Central Administration, you will not be able to administer your server farm until you configure another server in your farm to host the site.

Make sure that the server you want to remove is not running any important site components. If there are important services or components (such as a custom Web Part) running on the server that are not available on another server in the farm, removing the server might damage sites in your farm. For example, if the server you want to remove is an application server that is running Excel Services in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and it is the only server that is running Excel Services, removing the server could make any sites that rely on that service stop working correctly.

Before you uninstall a server, you must stop the services that are running on that server. For more information about how to determine which services are running on a specific server, see Check which services are enabled in the farm (Office SharePoint Server).

Warning

If you remove the index server from the farm, all the index files that you have created are permanently deleted, and you will have to perform a full crawl of your server farm to re-create the index.

Remove a Web server or an application server from a farm by using Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel

  1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Add or Remove Programs.

  2. In the list of Currently installed programs, select Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and then click Remove.

  3. Click Yes in the confirmation message to continue and uninstall the program.

Remove any kind of server from a farm by using Central Administration

Use this procedure to remove any kind of server from the farm. We recommend that for Web servers and application servers, you use the process to uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007 instead of using Central Administration. When you uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007, you remove the program files and other information from the server. Removing the server from the farm by using Central Administration does not delete this information from the server. Use the Central Administration operation only for removing database servers, or for removing a Web server or an application server from the farm when a server is no longer available to uninstall.

Important

You cannot remove a database server if it is the only database server available in the farm, or if it is the database server that is hosting the configuration database. Before you remove a database server from a farm, make sure that you have migrated any databases stored on that server to a different database server in your farm. For more information, see Move to another farm (Office SharePoint Server 2007).

Remove any kind of server from a farm by using Central Administration

  1. On the top navigation bar, click Operations.

  2. On the Operations page, in the Topology and Services section, click Servers in Farm.

  3. On the Servers in Farm page, open the Remove Server section, and then click Remove Server for the server that you want to remove from the farm.

  4. A dialog box appears and prompts you to proceed with the removal. Click OK.

Important

After you remove the server from the farm, the server and the sites hosted on the server are removed completely from the farm.

See Also

Concepts

Manage servers in the farm
Add an application server to the farm
Add a dedicated query server to the farm
Add an index server to the farm
Add a database server to the farm
Configure existing servers in the farm
Set up a multiple farm topology
Remove a server from the farm
Install language template packs
Uninstall Office SharePoint Server 2007