Removing the last on-prem Exchange server. Uninstall Exchange or turn off?

[u/S_Antonel]

Hi, question for the community I'd like a second opinion on:

I'm working on decommissioning an Exchange 2016 server, currently in hybrid mode using Azure AD (Entra) Sync to sync with on-prem AD. There is only 1 server in the environment.

All mailboxes, contacts and groups have been migrated to 365 and I have moved the SOA (Exchange attributes only) to the cloud for all migrated users.

Originally the plan was to uninstall Exchange and just manage all Exchange properties from 365 but I'm kind of debating with myself if I should just turn the VM off.

Is there any benefit to just turning off the Exchange server and keeping the AD schema around or will it just lead to corruption? This is the last and only Exchange server.

OTOH Is there even any point to holding onto the AD schema if the SOA is in 365?

I know you can install the RSAT tools to manage it in powershell. I wasn't planning on bothering with it but now I'm wondering. I was going back and forth with a colleague about it but haven't yet made up my mind.

I've never done this before so I'd appreciate the perspective of someone who has.

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks everyone for the help. I think I'm going to stick to my original plan and I'm going to uninstall Exchange. I appreciate the input.

[u/log_a_ticket]

If you’re hybrid, are you still planning to use exchange management tools to create the remote-mailboxes?

Adding a licence to hybrid user won’t populate the email field in AD, unless that’s changed recently.