Exchange Server 2007 Setup GUI Walkthrough

Exchange 2007 introduces a completely rewritten Setup GUI experience, designed to match the Administrative experience you'll get with Exchange 2007 Management Console once the installation is completed. Like the Exchange 2007 Management Console, the new Exchange Setup is written on top of the Windows PowerShell cmdlets and is therefore completely scriptable with one-liners!

In the rest of this blog post, I'll show you the new GUI and talk about the various options available throughout the setup process.

The Auto launch Screen

Above is the "auto launch" screen which is presented upon inserting the DVD disc. If this program does not run automatically, you can access it by double-clicking on setup.exe on the DVD. By clicking on the links, you can read about Exchange Server 2007, Hosted Services, Forefront Security, and install all the prerequisites before installing Exchange. Once installed, each prerequisite will indicate that it has been met by graying out the option and indicating "Installed" at the end of the text. Click on "Step 4: Install Microsoft Exchange" when you have completed installing the required programs.

Introduction

This is the introduction screen in Exchange Server 2007. Click "Help" to find out more, or click "Next" to continue. At any point of the installation, click on the "Help" button will bring up the relevant help section. Also, throughout the Setup wizard, the "Back" button can be used to go back to the previous page. The "Cancel" button can be used to abort the installation.

License Agreement

Please read through the end user license agreement (EULA). If you accept, please click "I accept the terms in the license agreement" and then click "Next". If you do not accept, you may click "Cancel" to exit.

Error Reporting

Error reporting will allow Exchange Server to send error information to Microsoft without user intervention. This will help us improve the quality of the software and also suggest solutions that may help with any errors encountered. Note that any personal information submitted in reports, if present, will not be used. If you would like to enable error reporting, please select "Yes"; otherwise click "No". To continue, click "Next".

Installation Type

Please select the installation type by clicking on the "Typical Exchange Server Installation" or the "Custom Exchange Server Installation" button. A typical installation will include the Hub Transport, Client Access and Mailbox roles, and Management Tools. If "Custom" is selected, you will be presented with page to customize the Exchange Server roles to install. To change the default installation path for Exchange, click "Browse" and select a path. By default it will be installed in "[Program Files directory]\Microsoft\Exchange Server". To continue, click "Next".

Server Role Selection

This page will be presented only if "Custom Exchange Server Installation" was selected from the last page. Click on the checkbox beside each role name to install the corresponding Exchange Server role. The Mailbox, Client Access, Hub Transport, and Unified Messaging server role can be installed together if desired. However, please note that each of the Edge Transport Server Role, Active Clustered Mailbox Role, and Passive Clustered Mailbox Role cannot be installed with another role on the same Exchange server. The Management Tools are installed with any selected role, or can be installed independently for an "Admin Only" configuration.

Exchange Organization

Please specify the name of the Exchange organization by typing in the text box. Note that this page is not presented if the Organization Name has already been specified by the first Exchange 2007 Server install or if you are installing in a preexisting Exchange 2003 organization.

Client Settings

This page is presented if the Mailbox role has been selected for installation and if this will be the first one in the organization. It is asking if you want public folders enabled for any Outlook 2003 or Entourage clients in your organization. This is the same as the "/EnableLegacyOutlook" switch when running setup from the command line. Select "Yes" or "No", then click "Next" to continue.

Mail Flow Settings

This page is presented if the Hub Transport has been selected for installation and if this will be the first install of the Exchange 2007 Hub Transport role in the organization. Please click "Browse" to select a legacy routing server (this server will be the target of the routing group connector, which will be automatically created).

Cluster Settings

This page is presented if you are installing the Active Clustered Mailbox Role. For the cluster type radio button, please select either "Cluster Continuous Replication" (CCR) or "Single Copy Cluster" (SCC). The CMS (Clustered Mailbox Server, previously called an "Exchange Virtual Server" - EVS) name is the name which will be created for the Exchange resource group. Please do not use the Windows cluster name or the name of any node that is in the cluster. The IP Address is the static IP address for the CMS, and it needs to be unique to the CMS.

Readiness Checks

The installation prerequisites for each role are checked here. Please wait for the checks to complete then click "Install" to start the installation. If there are errors, a detailed error message will be given on how to resolve the problem. If there are warnings, please take note and take appropriate action. The same prerequisite may show up more than once across the server roles (such as a required software update), but fixing the problem will satisfy the prerequisite. Note: if you wish to collapse the information area under each role, click once on the double up arrows on the right. To expand the information, click on that arrow (double down arrows) again.

Completion

The installation progress is shown in this screen and will be updated as the installation continues to each step. The installation can take a number of minutes to complete while at this stage. After everything is done, click Finish and the Exchange Management Console will open if the checkbox at the bottom remains checked. After this point, the auto launch screen is again presented and you should continue to "Step 5: Get critical updates for Microsoft Exchange" to get the latest updates.

Installing Microsoft Exchange 2007 on Microsoft Windows Server 2008

Introduction

It is nearly a year after the release of Exchange 2007 and many of us now have complete Exchange 2007 implementations. I guess that means we are looking for something new to do! If this is the case then you won’t be disappointed, as very soon we will be presented with the new challenge of moving our existing Exchange 2007 systems onto Windows Server 2008.

Table 1 lists the various supported scenarios for Exchange and OS versions.

Exchange Version	Server OS Supported for Installation
Exchange 2003	Windows 2000 Server SP4 Windows Server 2003 (All SP levels and R2)
Exchange 2007 RTM	Windows Server 2003 SP1 + SP2 (inc R2)
Exchange 2007 SP1	Windows Server 2003 SP1 + SP2 (inc R2) Windows Server 2008 RTM

Table 1: Exchange/OS versions supported for install

The first thing to note is that Exchange 2007 RTM is not supported on Windows Server 2008. To install Exchange 2007 on Server 2008 you must run Exchange 2007 SP1. This service pack, as many of you may know, is a little different from previous service packs in that it is a complete installation of Exchange. Effectively SP1 is RTM with the SP1 code slipstreamed into it. Having established that Exchange 2007 SP1 is required to install on Server 2008, what other considerations are there?

Probably the biggest consideration is Active Directory. Table 2 sets out the different Domain Controller versions supported by different versions of Exchange.

Exchange Version	Domain Controller OS Supported
Exchange 2003	Windows 2000 Server SP4 Windows Server 2003 (All SP levels and R2) Windows Server 2008 RTM
Exchange 2007 RTM	Windows Server 2003 SP1 + SP2 (inc R2) Windows Server 2008 RTM
Exchange 2007 SP1	Windows Server 2003 SP1 + SP2 (inc R2) Windows Server 2008 RTM

Table 2: The Exchange/Domain Controller support matrix

One new Active Directory feature of Windows Server 2008 which I haven’t mentioned is Read Only Domain Controllers (RODC) (and Global Catalog servers). These are servers which do not hold a writable copy of the AD and also do not hold account passwords. They are most likely to be used in branch office scenarios to prevent security breaches either intentional or accidental. So how do these RODCs affect Exchange? Simply put, Exchange doesn’t use them! When left to automatically associate with a domain controller (or global catalog server) Exchange will ignore the RODC or ROGC. The important thing for administrators to remember is not to manually set Exchange to work with a RODC as things simply will not work correctly.

One other area that will be welcome to administrators is that with the release of Exchange 2007 SP1, the Exchange Management Console will finally be supported on Windows Vista, and for that matter on Server 2008 as well.

Before moving on to how we upgrade, I think it is worth clarifying that Exchange 2007 SP1 will not install on Windows Server 2008 Server Core. Server Core, for those who haven’t heard, is a cut down version of Windows Server 2008 which only presents a command line interface. It has been stripped down to run various server roles including amongst others Domain Controller, DHCP, DNS, File and Print. However, because a lot of functionality has been stripped out to ensure a small footprint and less need for patching, important components such as the .Net Framework are not present to support Exchange.

Installation

Having looked at all the background, let’s get started with the installation. The first thing to cover is preparing your Windows Server 2008 machine for Exchange 2007. There are a bunch of prerequisites which must be met as listed below:

• .Net Framework v2.0 or 3.0
• PowerShell RTM
• MMC 3.0 (installed by default)
• IIS 7 (Various components needed by different roles)

For a much more detailed look at the requirements for each Exchange server role see Exchange 2007 System Requirements.
For now we are going to install an Exchange 2007 SP1 server in a new domain and new organisation. We will install the CAS, HT and Mailbox roles. In order to install the prerequisites we will run the following commands one after the other at a command prompt:
ServerManagerCmd -i RSAT-ADDS
ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Server
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-ISAPI-Ext
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Metabase
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Basic-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Digest-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Windows-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Dyn-Compression
After the first command (RSAT-ADDS) you will need to reboot as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Installing Active Directory Management Tools and being prompted to reboot
After the reboot, I used a simple batch file to run the other commands in sequence. Part of the output from the commands is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Part of the output from the prerequisite installation
For more detailed information about the Windows Server 2008 roles/features required for the other Exchange 2007 roles (Edge Transport Server and Unified Messaging Server) see How to Install Exchange 2007 SP1 Prerequisites on Windows Server 2008.
Having successfully completed the installation of prerequisites, it is time to install Exchange. Start setup and click “Install Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1” as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Starting Setup of Exchange Server 2007 SP1
Next run through the usual setup steps as shown in Figures 4 – 11.

Figure 4: The SP1 Setup introduction screen

Figure 5: Accepting the license agreement

Figure 6: Opting into the Microsoft Error Reporting scheme

Figure 7: Selecting a typical install which installs CAS, HT, Mailbox roles and the management tools

Figure 8: Setting the new Exchange Organisation name

Figure 9: Opting not to create public folders for legacy clients

Figure 10: Exchange Readiness checks in progress

Figure 11: The not for production use warning before install about using a 32 bit version of Exchange 2007
Having completed the steps in Figures 3-11 installation begins. However, it is at this point that an error occurs as shown in Figure 12. It would appear that for whatever reason, the registry key “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting\Consent” does not exist!

Figure 12: The registry key doesn’t exist error message
Note:It is highly unlikely that this problem will still exist once the products ship.
To rectify this problem locate the relevant area in the registry and create the required key as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13: The newly created registry key
Having resolved the problem with the registry key you are left with no other option than to exit setup. On doing this you will be prompted to reboot, which you should do.
When the server is backed up, restart setup which will start in Exchange Maintenance Mode as shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14: Exchange setup restarting in Maintenance Mode
At this point, step through the remaining setup screens as shown in Figures 15-17.

Figure 15: Selecting the relevant roles for installation

Figure 16: Again making the choice not to create public folders for legacy clients

Figure 17: Setup completed!
Once setup completes you will have a working Exchange 2007 SP1 install on Windows Server 2008 as shown inFigure 18.

Figure 18: Exchange 2007 SP1 installed on Windows Server 2008
Before completing this article I thought it might be interesting to show the registry key that we created earlier. As can be seen in Figure 19, it is now populated with various values.

Figure 19: The values in the registry key created to solve the installation error

Summary

As you can see from the steps above, the install process to put Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 is basically very simple. At this time there is the odd glitch but there is no doubt these will be ironed out before Release to Manufacturing. I feel the only thing that has the potential to cause a delay in deployment are the usual worries about deploying a brand new OS and the fact that if you already have Exchange 2007 on Server 2003 you will have to perform a migration which requires extra hardware.