Uninstalling FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

If required, FAST Search can be removed from the farm, but it is not a simple process. To remove a FAST Server, first you have to make a deployment reconfiguration, by following these steps:

1. Locate and open to edit the deployment.xml file in the FASTSearchetc config_datadeployment folder on the FAST admin server.
2. Remove the host tag for the server you want to remove from the farm.
3. Stop the services FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for SharePoint Monitoring.
4. Open Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint shell as administrator, and run the following command to Set-FASTSearchConfiguration to reconfigure the FAST deployment.
5. Start the services FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for SharePoint Monitoring.

If you made this modification in the deployment.xml file, or you have a single server environment, you can uninstall the FAST Server from the server by performing the following tasks:

1. In Control Panel, choose Uninstall a Program from the Programs and Features list.
2. Select Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint and uninstall it, as shown in Figure 8.17.

   Figure 8.17. Uninstall FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.

   

3. When the uninstall process finishes, reboot your server.

By following these steps, the FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 will be uninstalled from your server, with files and registry keys. Note that you will have to manually remove the FAST Search Server databases, logs, prerequisites, and generated files.

Also, you have to delete the FAST Content SSA and FAST Query SSA from the SharePoint 2010 farm if the full FAST Search environment is uninstalled.