The CU12 for Exchange 2019 and the CU23 for Exchange 2016 allow only the management tools to be installed on a server or workstation. Especially in a hybrid organization in which all mailboxes have already been migrated to Exchange Online, the last Exchange on-Prem can now be shut down.
Before the Exchange Management Tools Setup is executed, only a few prerequisites need to be installed. Here are the Windows features that are required on Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022:
Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS,Web-Metabase,Web-Mgmt-Console
Once the prerequisites have been installed, the Exchange setup can be started:
In the first dialogs of the setup, simply click on "Next":
Accept license agreement and select whether telemetry data may be sent to Microsoft:
To ensure that only the administration tools are installed and not a complete Exchange Server, "Don't use recommended settings" must be selected in the next dialog:
Only the administration tools can now be selected in the "Server Role Selection" dialog:
If desired, the installation path can be customized; for a complete Exchange installation, it is advisable to place the path on a separate partition. However, this is not necessary for the administration tools:
If the Active Directory does not yet have the current CU12 schema, Setup will update the schema. To do this, the user must be a member of the AD group "Schema Admins":
Setup now installs the Exchange administration tools:
Once the setup is complete, the Exchange Management Shell is available on the server.
Wimportant: The management tools are only the Exchange Management Shell (i.e. the PowerShell CMDLets), not the Exchange Admin Center which can be accessed via browser. So if you want to shut down the last "Management Exchange Server" in a hybrid organization, you will have to use the PowerShell to manage the Exchange Online mailboxes in the future. Uninstalling the Management Exchange Server is not supported, only shutting down the server. If you are planning to shut down the last Exchange Server, you will need to carry out further steps after installing the management tools. Instructions can be found here:
After shutting down the last Exchange Server, the Exchange Management Shell cannot be started directly from the Start menu because the shell tries to connect to the Exchange Server:
Instead, the shell can be started in a PowerShell with admin authorizations as follows:
Add-PSSnapin *RecipientManagement
