In my lab I have a domain called philipflint.com and a domain controller called DC1. I’ll be installing Exchange on a server called EXCH1 with the CAS, Hub Transport and Mailbox roles. All servers will be running WIndows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition for no reason other than that’s what I tend to install in my labs. Certainly, everything in this post will work on Standard Edition.

One trick that will save you time is installing the required pre-requisites. These are listed here. Simply find the list of roles you want to install an the operating system that will be hosting Exchange and copy and paste the commands.

As I will be running Windows Server 2008 R2 with all three roles on the server I first install the 2007 Office System Converter Pack found here. This is a very simple installation of the next, next, next variety. After installing the pack, we start PowerShell (See the blue Icon next to the start button) and then run the command Import-Module ServerManager. To do this, and run subsequent commands, we need to run PowerShell as an Administrator. Simply right click the PowerShell icon and choose “Run As Administrator“.

Powershell Icon above.

This imports the ServerManager cmdlts into PowerShell. Once this is done we can run the commands that install our pre-requisites. For a typical installation these are:

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,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy -Restart

Once the pre-requisites are installed, the server will reboot. After rebooting we need to start an elevated PowerShell command prompt (by right clicking the icon and choosing “Run As Administrator“) and run the command Set-Service NetTcpPortSharing -StartupType Automatic. Now we’re ready to install. Simply insert the DVD or double click on setup.exe on the DVD drive.

The first step after installing the pre-requisites is to choose an installation language (Step 3 on the GUI). When you click on it you get the selection below.

I choose “Install only languages from the DVD“. You’re then free to move to Step 4 “Install Microsoft Exchange” !

The installation will start and take you through the guided installation wizard. First, click Next on the introduction screen.

Read and Accept the license agreement if you want to continue.

If you prefer to make Exchange a more stable product for all users, enable error reporting and click on Next.

For a typical installation, leave the selection at its default. Here, you can change the placement of installation binaries, For large scale or more secure systems you may want to move the binaries to separate spindles or a different location.

For more complicated installations, select Custom Exchange Server Installation. Even though I am going to perform a typical installation I show below the Custom Installation screen.

Notice the difference between Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 ? There are no choices for clustered mailbox servers as Exchange 2010 now uses Database Availability Groups (DAG) for replicating databases.

As this is a pristine installation, we’re now asked to give our Exchange Organization a name (this would not be the case if we were installing into an existing installation).

We’re then asked if we require a public folder database to support connectivity from Outlook 2003 / Entourage for Mac clients. Depending on your corporate policy you may want to create public folders but for a pristine implementation running up to date clients then I would consider not using Public Folders at all.

If your CAS servers (Outlook Web Access, Active Sync, Outlook Anywhere) are internet facing then you can enter the public URL for this service.

Again, if you want to improve future editions of Microsoft Exchange the sign up for the Customer Experience Improvement program.

The installation will then perform its readiness checks to ensure that the server meets the basic pre-requisites for installation of Exchange. You will no doubt note that I have not performed any schema , forest or domain preparation. I am installing Exchange as the forest root administrator and so installation will proceed as expected. For larger implementations then Active Directory may need to be extended and prepared from on one of the Domain Controllers. A note should be taken that, if we prepare the domain, no Exchange 2007 or earlier servers will be able to be added to the Organization.

You can now click on Install to install the binaries. When the installation has completed, check that everything installed OK and click on Finish

The Exchange Management Console will open but leave that for a bit and go back to the setup screen. The final choice is to Get Critical Updates for Microsoft Exchange.

Clicking on the link will take you to the Microsoft Updates site where you can agree to download updates for software other than just Microsoft Windows (i.e. Exchange Server). Simply follow the wizard through to update your software.

That now gets you to the point that you have a basic installation of Exchange. This doesn’t mean that you have a working copy of Exchange, we have merely installed the binaries on the server. In my next post I walk you through configuring Exchange for the first time.