We are going to do a series of lessons which will help many interested people to start working with Exchange 2010 earlier. We will do our best to explain all the options in this product and it will be in details and useful for you.

Our lessons will work in latest technology; we will use Windows 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 RTM and Microsoft Office 2010 Beta version.

All what you need to follow us in our lessons are to install Windows 2008 R2, configure the TCP/IP and Join the computer to the domain.

Before start installing Exchange 2010, we need to make sure all Exchange 2010 prerequisite is configured.

In the following a list of Exchange 2010 prerequisites:

1- General Prerequisites:

• Make sure that the functional level of your forest is at least Windows Server 2003, and that the Schema Master is running Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 or later.
• The full installation option of Windows Server 2008 SP2-64bit or Windows Server 2008 R2-64bit must be used for all servers running Exchange 2010 server roles.
• Both Windows Server 2008 SP2-64bit or Windows Server 2008 R2-64bit Standard & Enterprise are supported and we can use them to install Exchange 2010.
  • Note: (Later in our LAB, we will configure DAG which is the high availability solution for Exchange 2010 database. This feature required windows 2008 enterprise edition)
• DNS must configure correctly in your Active Directory forest. All servers that run Exchange Server 2010 must be able to locate Active Directory domain controllers, global catalog servers, and other Exchange servers.
• For all server roles other than the Edge Transport server role, you must first join the computer to the appropriate internal Active Directory forest and domain.

2- Operating System Components Prerequisites:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows Remote Management (WinRM) 2.0
• Windows PowerShell V2
• IIS 7
• ASP.NET

In addition to the above, we need to install the following windows components (features):

• RSAT-ADDS (requires a reboot)
• Web-Server
• Web-ISAPI-Ext
• Web-Metabase
• Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console
• Web-Basic-Auth
• Web-Digest-Auth
• Web-Windows-Auth
• Web-Dyn-Compression
• Net-HTTP-Activation
• RPC-over-HTTP-Proxy

3- Software Prerequisites:

On servers that will host the Hub Transport or Mailbox server role, Microsoft Filter Pack is required to be installed. You can download the Microsoft Filter Pack from the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=60c92a37-719c-4077-b5c6-cac34f4227cc&displaylang=en

Note: You can find more information about Exchange 2010 Prerequisites in the following link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354.aspx

Ok Let's start

Install Microsoft Filter Pack

We will start installing Exchange 2010 prerequisites, the first step is to install Microsoft Filter Pack, we already download it and save it in C: drive of Exchange 2010 server:

Microsoft Filter Pack will install and register IFilters with the Windows Indexing Service.  These IFilters are used by Microsoft Search products to index the contents of specific document formats such as (.docx, .docm, .pptx, .pptm, .xlsx, .xlsm ... etc).

Now double click on Microsoft Filter Pack file, welcome screen will appear, click next:

Accept the license agreement and then click next:

Installation will start:

Installation finished, click OK:

Install Operating System Components Prerequisites

After we install Microsoft Filter Pack, now we will install OS components which required for Exchange 2010, to do this; On the Start Menu, navigate to All Programs, then Accessories, then Windows PowerShell:

On Windows PowerShell console, run the following command:

Import-Module ServerManager

Before we go to next step, we need to know why we apply the above command line. As you know; Server Manager is a way to Install/Uninstall server Roles & Features in Windows 2008. On Windows 2008 R2, Windows PowerShell provides a new approach to managing server Roles & features via Server Manager PowerShell cmdlets. To use the Server Manager cmdlets, we need to import Server Manager module by running the PowerShell command “Import-Module servermanager”. The reason is; these cmdlets are encapsulated in the Server Manager module, and they are not a part of PowerShell build-in cmdlets.

Now; we will install all OS components and all windows features which required for Exchange 2010. We will do this by running a command line which we copy it from Exchange 2010 Prerequisites Technet website. The following command will install everything required for all Exchange 2010 roles (except Edge Role):

As you can see, the command line ended by "-Restart" which will restart the server to finalize the installation process.

After the system has restarted, we need to configure the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service for Automatic startup by running the following command:

Maybe you will ask me why we need this service, the answer is:

Net.TCP Port Sharing Service allows many worker processes to share the same TCP port. you can read more about this service in the following link:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734772.aspx

The last thing we need is to check windows update and make sure we update the windows to looks like the following:

Now we are ready to install Exchange 2010. Before we start the installation, I would like to mentioned important point here, to install Exchange Server 2010, you need to run the Exchange Server 2010 setup command for preparing the Active Directory forest for the installation. These preparations have many command lines which they are depend in different criteria. The criteria for using the command are the following:

1- Install Exchange 2010 in a forest with one Domain only.

2- Install Exchange 2010 in a forest with multiple Domains.

3- Upgrade Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010.

Now; for our LAB, we are matching the First criteria which give us two options:

1- Prepare AD schema by using the following command line:

setup.com /PrepareAD /OrganizationName: “your Organization Name”

2- Start Installing Exchange 2010 without doing the above command, if you choose this option, Exchange 2010 will discover that AD schema is not prepared and it will do it automatically while the installation.

In our LAB; we will choose the second option.

In our Next Lesson, we will install Exchange 2010; don’t go away, it will be after couple of days.

Regards,

Ra'fat