How to Install Exchange Server 2010 – Part4 – Step by Step

Hello Everyone,
                  Today we will install exchange server 2010 on mbx2.evolve.com , but this time, we will not use the GUI, instead we will use the command prompt to install it.
As we did with mbx1.evolve.com, we need to install some pre-reqs before we proceed.

So here are the commands.
1. First install the Microsoft Filter Pack, you can find the link in prev blog to download it.
2. Use the below command to install the required features for exchange server mailbox role.

"Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server -Restart"

If you get an error, probably you should give the command, "import-module servermanager" to make it work.

3. OK, we are all good for the install of Mailbox Role on this server through Command Prompt.

try the below command:

"setup /mode:install /roles:m"

See my screenshot below:

Notice that it has completed successfully.
IF you look at the screenshot closely, you will see there is a warning, which states, there is not HUB transport role detected, well we know that, we are going to install one, so lets ignore it.
For detail command options on this way of install, refer to this link.

Well until next time, its me 'TTTTTT Thiyaguuuuuuuuuuuuu"

Cheers
Thiyagu

How to Install Exchange Server 2010 – Part3 – Step by Step

Welcome back everyone, time for the Part3 of our Exchange Server Install.
In the last part, we finished off with the /prepareschema and /preparead command to prepare our AD to be ready for the exchange server 2010 install.

Today, lets start with the Exchange Server 2010 install, well lets hold on for a second there.
There are some pre-req softwares / features which needs to be installed before we install exchange, well below is the list .

1. .net Framewwork 3.5 sp1, you can use server manager and add this feature
     NOTE: if you try to download from internet and install this, it wont work, it will throw an error, since this is a built in feature, just use the server manager to install it.

2. There are many other features which needs to be installed, like IIS, Remote Admin System Tools for AD. etc., well there are quite a few, to simply this, use the below powershell commands to get all of them install in one go.
         1.Open a Powershell prompt and then type 'import-module servermanger'.
          2. type this long command without the quotes and then hit enter "

Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,

Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,

WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server -Restart"

Once the above command completes susccessfully, continue with the next step 

Download the 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack" from this link and install it, 

this is required for the indexing office related files and is used by the indexing service.

Ok, so now you are good to start the installation of Exchange Server 2010.

Copy the setup files over to the server ( i prefer it this way).

Then navigate to the folder and double click 'setup.exe'

 You see already 2 options are greyed out meaning, that they are there already,

first is the .net framework which we installed before, and the powershell v2, windows 2008 r2

comes by default with v2 version, so we are covered.

Next option is to select language options, there you can click load all language options on the DVD.

Which will installed all the language details from the SETUP folder.

now click "Install Microsoft Exchange", this will bring up....

           Click next, will bring up..

Accept the EULA and then click next...

Click accordingly as you wish, i said no here..

Well, you have seen my lab environment, we are using mbx1.evolve.com for this install which will only install mailbox role on this, so we should choose the custom option and click next, becos the typical will install mailbox,hub,client access , so we dont want typical, we need custom...

Check only Mailbox role and then take the defaults of the path and then hit NEXT.

Click on "Yes" if you have old users using outlook 2003, am going to use that , may be later we may have to test some functionality so.

Click next, now u will have a option to participate in MS Customer some program, i choose "NO" and then clicked next.

Setup will check the server and see if all looks good, note that we have two warnings, which is that it says we dont have a Client Access server and Hub transport and we wont be able to send/recieve emails until we setup one, so we know that we are going to have seperate servers for them , so you can ignore them for now and click Install and wait for the setup to complete.

Review the completeion or click on View Setup Log and then click finish.

Congratulations, you now have Exchange Server 2010 installed with a Mailbox Role.

After clicking finish , this should now bring up the Exchange Management Console (EMC) not the EMC company :) .. gone are the days of ESM (Exchange System Manager) .. welcome to the world of Exchange Management Console/Shell (EMC/EMS) :)

thanks all for reading, if you like the article, please leave a comment :).

thanks again.

Thiyagu.

Installing RSAT tools on Windows 7

Hello Everyone,

Before I went on with the Exchange server 2010 install, i wanted to manage the hyper-v which was installed on my desktop through laptop (windows 7), this is possible.

After some googling, i found out that there is something called RSAT which is "Remote Server Administrator Tools" , this package has many other tools within it and one of them is the "Hyper-V Manager" so that is what we want, you can download this package from below link:

DOWNLOAD LINK:

After that, install the package, once that is complete.

1. Go to Control panel, then click on 'Program & Features' , which will bring up the below screenshot:

Select the Hyper-V tools and then install the features.

Once the setup finishes, you should now have the Hyper-V Manager installed on your machine.

 You can fire up Hyper-V and then try to connect to the Hyper-V server, but stop right there, i am sure it is not going to work.

There needs to be a lot answered before this will work.

For example, in my scenario, both of my machines are part of a workgroup. 

I was not able to ping my Windows 2008 r2 desktop machine by the DNS name which (w2k8r2), well, we can easily fix that by editing the hosts files in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file. 

Add a entry for the server which is running the hyper-v role.

NOTE: In Windows 7 you may not able to able to edit the hosts file directly, check this MS KB for the workaround.

Now you should be able to ping that machine by the name from the client machine.

You think we are good? :) , well no, looks like it is going to take a lot more than that, to really have this working, a lot of configs needs to be in place , i googled around and then finally i found John Howard's blog which exactly details is this, and brilliantly John has already helped everyone out there to solve this easily, he already came up with a script to automate this stuff and save a lot of time for all of us.

You can check here for the info on how to get it configured from John's blog

and vola, i finally have my hyper-v setup on windows 7 desktop. 

thanks you everyone for reading, please comment if you have any questions or if you liked the article.


thanks
Thiyagu

How to Install Exchange Server 2010 – Part2 – Step by Step

Welcome back, in the previous Part, we saw some of the pre-reqs for Exchange 2010, we will continue this on this part along with preparing the AD domain for the Exchange Server 2010 installation.
Let’s get started right away, shall we?
   
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 uses Active Directory to store and share directory information with Microsoft Windows.
Active Directory forest design for Exchange 2010 is similar to Exchange 2007. The main change in Active Directory for Exchange 2010 is in the introduction of Role Based Access Control (RBAC). In Exchange 2007, Active Directory provides ways for you to delegate administrative authority to directory objects by using access control lists (ACLs). In Exchange 2010, you don't need to modify and manage ACLs. RBAC enables you to control, at both broad and granular levels, what administrators and end-users can do.
If you have any computers in your organization running Exchange 2003, open a Command Prompt window, and then run one of the following commands:
•    To prepare legacy Exchange permissions in every domain in the forest that contains the Exchange Enterprise Servers and Exchange Domain Servers groups, run the following command.
setup /PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions or setup /pl
•    To prepare legacy Exchange permissions in a specific domain, run the following command.
setup /PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions: < FQDN of domain you want to prepare > or setup /pl:<FQDN of domain you want to prepare>

Since our lab is just going to be Exchange 2010, we wont be doing this, so let’s skip this and jump to the next step.
From a Command Prompt window, run the following command.
setup /PrepareSchema or setup /ps
setup /PrepareSchema will automatically perform the PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions step.

Do you see all the Virtual Machines ?:) nice isn't it, anyway for now, we are only bothered about the DC1.evolve.com  to prepare our AD, so lets connect to that machine and run the command.

 

See the command completed successfully.

Now that the /PrepareSchema completed successfully, let’s go to the next step, which is:
setup /PrepareAD [/OrganizationName: <organization name> ] or setup /p [/on:<organization name>]
My Org name will be “EVOLVE” similar to my test Domain Name “Evolve.com”
So then the command would be
Setup /PrepareAD /on:EVOLVE

You can see from the above screenshot that the command completed successfully.
But how do we verify that it did what it suppose to do? Here is how..
Open ADSIEDIT.msc

See that it created the Org Name and all the required containers, looks like we are on the right track.
Carrying on…
Run setup /PrepareDomain or setup /pd to prepare the local domain. You don't need to run this in the domain where you ran Step 3. Running setup /PrepareAD prepares the local domain.
Above step is not required for our lab, since we already ran the PrepareAD switch and we have only one domain.
Again, we should have taken the GUI based approach, which would have done all these stuff automatically for us since this is the first Exchange 2010 server.
But I guess, you all learned something out of this approach and know actually what is need to get a Exchange server 2010 installed.
That was quick, lets meet in the next part for PART3, where we will start the actual install of our first Exchange server which will MBX1.evolve.com , we will just install Mailbox Role on this server and this time we will take the GUI approach and for MBX2.evolve.com, we will do an “UNATTENDED” install .
Till then … bye

Cheers
Thiyagu

How to Install Exchange Server 2010 – Part1 – Step by Step

Hi Everyone,

                As you saw from my previous blog, I already have a separate HYPER-V environment.
Below are the Virtual Machines which are setup right now:

1.       DC1.Evolve.com
    a.       Server hosts Active Directory/DNS role

2.       MBX1.evolve.com   
    a.       Will host the Mailbox Role
3.       MBX2.evolve.com
    a.       Will host the Mailbox Role
4.       CAS1.evolve.com
    a.       Will host the Mailbox Role
5.       HUB1.evolve.com
    a.       Will host the HUB transport role
6.       Client1.evolve.com
    a.       Will have Windows 7 + Outlook 2007 , this is where we will do all of our testings

As you see, only the domain controller is setup at the moment.
Remaining all the servers are not configured yet, I will do them one at a time and I will update the blog along, so we learn the system as we go.

Let’s jump in, before we install Exchange Server 2010, there are few pre-requistes which needs to be installed, so let’s take a look at them.

Directory Servers:             
   Schema master
By default, the schema master runs on the first Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller installed in a forest. The schema master must be running any of the following:
    * Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1 or later (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise

Global catalog server
In each Active Directory site where you plan to install Exchange 2010, you must have at least one global catalog server running any of the following:

    * Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition with SP1 or later (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1 or later (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise

Domain controller
In each Active Directory site where you plan to install Exchange 2010, you must have at least one writeable domain controller running any of the following:

    * Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition with SP1 or later (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1 or later (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise (32-bit or 64-bit)
    * Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise

Active Directory forest

Active Directory must be at Windows Server 2003 forest functionality mode or higher.
LAB which I have setup is all Windows server 2008 R2 and all fresh and they are in the “Windows Server 2003” forest functional level.

It is good to have a 64bit Directory Architecture, as per MS it is recommended for better performance.


Hardware:
                Yes, we all know Exchange 2010 can only run on 64 bit hardware and 64 bit OS.
                And we have enough disk space/memory/paging file / ntfs etc which are some of the pre-requisites  needed, all this are satisfied part of my LAB, so our lab is good to go for Exchange Server 2010.

OS:
                OS should be running on a 64 bit processor.
                Atleast Windows 2008 SP2 Standard (64 bit edition)

Management Tools:

                One of the following:

    * Windows Vista with SP2 for management tools only installation
    * 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard with SP2
    * 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise with SP2
    * 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
    * 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
    * Windows 7

That is it for now in this part, meet you in the next part....

Adios..... 

~T

Test EXCHANGE 2010 LAB using Hyper-V

Hello,

 That was a long time now since my last blog, well i have been busy again, anyways, lets come back to the topic.

Till now, I was using a desktop and installed Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise on it and then AD+Exchange 2010 etc and have been doing all the scripting with powershell and other Exchange Administration, but you really can't do much with a single machine, so i had to up my ante a bit , so i upgraded my host machine which is still a desktop to have another 4GB of ram.

I completed re-installed my host machine, which is now a standalone Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise with Hyper-V installed.

Below is the LAB which will be coming up soon..... I already have MBX1 & MBX2 Virtual machines up, but other machines are still in progress, keep watching this space.

Once we have the lab ready, we will have a lot of space to test the different features of Exchange 2010.

Well am really excited about it :) 

Exchange Server 2010 - Create New Mailbox Database

.......... wassssupppppppppppppppppppp..??????

Well, am back, Early thursday morning and I aint sleeping, lets learn something, today i will show you how to create a new mailbox database using powershell.

It is a very simple one-liner again, below is the actual command:

new-mailboxdatabase -name 'MBX DB2' -server 'w2k8r2' -edbfilepath 'C:\MailboxDB\DB2\MBX_DB2.edb' -logFolderPath 'C:\MailboxDB\DB2_Logs'

Press Enter, vola, you have your new mailbox database created :)

When you create this new DB, you can note that it is not mounted, you have to mount it urself, well again you can use this below command to mount a database:

mount-database -identity 'mbx db1'

YOu can now see in EMC, that the new DB is created:

And below is the screenshot of the mount command, pretty straight forward though.

Well that was really so easy isn't it :)..