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