Remove a server from a farm in SharePoint Servers 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition

Article
02/21/2023

APPLIES TO: no-img-13 2013 yes-img-16 2016 yes-img-19 2019 yes-img-se Subscription Edition no-img-sop SharePoint in Microsoft 365

Removing a server from a SharePoint farm

For information about uninstallation procedures that SharePoint Servers 2016, 2019, or Subscription Edition support, see Uninstall SharePoint Servers 2016 or 2019 and Uninstall SharePoint Server Subscription Edition.

Removing a server that contains a search topology component can affect future search activities. The extent of that effect depends on the farm search topology. We recommend that you remove or relocate any search topology components from a server before removing the server from the farm.

If you remove a server that hosts a crawl component, no index files are lost. However, you might reduce or remove the capacity to crawl content.

You can lose index files in the following situations:

The farm has only one query component, and you remove the server that hosts the query component.
You have configured the index to be partitioned and you delete the last query component in one of the partitions. In this case, you will lose a portion of the index.

In either of these cases, a full crawl will have to be performed to re-create the index files.

You can deploy specific techniques to build fault tolerance into the search topology. If these techniques are followed, the deliberate or unplanned removal of a server from the topology can be absorbed without losing data and without affecting the ability to crawl or serve queries. (However, performance can still be affected.)

Make sure that the server that you want to remove is not running any important site components. If important services or components (such as a custom Web Part) are running on the server and are not available on another server in the farm, removing the server can impact sites in the farm. For example, if the server that you want to remove is the only server in the farm that is running the Business Data Connectivity service, removing the server can make any sites that rely on that service stop working correctly.

To remove a server from a farm, you must first move any databases that are hosted by that server to another database server in the farm and then use Central Administration to remove the database server from the farm.

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 hosts the configuration database.

Caution

If you uninstall SharePoint Server 2016, 2019, or Subscription Edition from the server that is running Central Administration, you will be unable to administer the server farm until you configure another server in the farm to host the Central Administration site.

Remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using Microsoft PowerShell

Before you remove a database server from a farm, make sure that you have moved any databases stored on that server to a different database server in your farm.

Note

Using PowerShell is the recommended way to remove a server from the farm.

To remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using PowerShell

Verify that you have the following memberships:
- securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.
- db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.
- Administrators group on the server on which you are running the PowerShell cmdlets.
  
  An administrator can use the Add-SPShellAdmin cmdlet to grant permissions to use SharePoint Server 2016, 2019 and Subscription Edition cmdlets.
  
  Note
  
  If you do not have permissions, contact your Setup administrator or SQL Server administrator to request permissions. For more information about PowerShell permissions, see Add-SPShellAdmin.
From a PowerShell command prompt, type the following command.
```
Disconnect-SPConfigurationDatabase 
```
Note

This cmdlet only removes the local SharePoint server from the SharePoint farm. It can't remove remote SharePoint servers or database servers from the SharePoint farm.

Remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using the PSConfig.exe command-line tool

You can remove a server from the SharePoint farm by using the PSConfig.exe tool, which is an alternative interface to perform several operations that control how SharePoint Server 2016, 2019, and Subscription Edition is configured. You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to perform these operations.

To remove a SharePoint server from a farm by using PSConfig

Verify that you have the following memberships:
- securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.
- db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.
- Administrators group on the server on which you are running the PSConfig.exe tool.
  
  Note
  
  If you do not have permissions, contact your Setup administrator or SQL Server administrator to request permissions.
From a command prompt, type the following syntax.
```
psconfig.exe -cmd configdb -disconnect
```

Remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using Control Panel

You can remove a server from the farm by uninstalling SharePoint Server 2016 from the server through Control Panel. When you uninstall SharePoint Servers 2016, 2019, or Subscription Edition by using Control Panel, you disconnect the server from the farm, and then remove the program files and other information from the server.

To remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using Control Panel

Verify that you have the following memberships:
- securityadmin fixed server role on the SQL Server instance.
- db_owner fixed database role on all databases that are to be updated.
- Administrators group on the server on which SharePoint Server 2016 is installed.
  
  An administrator can use the Add-SPShellAdmin cmdlet to grant permissions to use SharePoint Server 2016 cmdlets.
  
  Note
  
  If you do not have permissions, contact your Setup administrator or SQL Server administrator to request permissions. For more information about PowerShell permissions, see Add-SPShellAdmin.
On the server that you want to remove from the farm, click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click Programs and Features.
In the list of currently installed programs, click Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2019 or, Microsoft SharePoint Server Subscription Edition and then click Uninstall.
Click Continue at the confirmation prompt to uninstall the program.

Remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using Central Administration

If a server is no longer available, or if uninstalling SharePoint Server from Control Panel is not possible, you can remove the SharePoint server from the farm by using the SharePoint Central Administration website. Removing a server from the farm by using Central Administration does not uninstall SharePoint Server from the server.

Important

This method of removing a server should only be used when you need to remove an orphaned server from the configuration database. > The recommended way of removing a server from the farm is PowerShell, see Remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using Microsoft PowerShell.

Removing the server from the farm by using Central Administration does not delete this information from the server. Use the Central Administration procedure for removing database servers only, or for removing a web server or an application server from the farm when the server is no longer available to uninstall through Control Panel.

You can follow these steps to remove a SharePoint or database server from the farm. However, we recommend that you remove web servers and application servers from a farm by using Windows PowerShell, instead of by using Central Administration. For information, see Remove a server from a SharePoint farm by using Microsoft PowerShell.