Exchange 2010 Deployment: Preparing Active Directory

The first step when installing Exchange Server 2010 is to prepare the Active Directory schema.

Applying the Exchange Server 2007 SP2 Schema Update

When installing to an existing Exchange 2003 organization, and to retain backward compatibility with Exchange Server 2007, the Active Directory schema updates for Exchange Server 2007 are applied first.

You must perform these steps with an account that is a member of the Enterprise Admins and Schema Admins groups.

Exchange Server 2007 setup will not run on Windows Server 2008 R2, even just to perform the schema update.  If you have installed Windows Server 2008 R2 to run Exchange Server 2010 you will need to run the Exchange Server 2007 schema update from a different server that runs either:

• Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 with
  • Windows Installer 4.5
  • PowerShell
  • .NET Framework 2.0 SP1
• Windows Server 2008 with Windows Installer 4.5, or
• Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2

Note that the server you run the schema update from cannot be an existing Exchange server.

If you have installed Windows Server 2008 to run Exchange Server 2010 you can run the schema update on that server.

The server must reside in the same Active Directory Site as the Schema Master, and you will need to use the 32-bit or 64-bit Exchange Server 2007 setup files to match the operating system of the server you will run the schema update from.

Download the Exchange Server 2007 files from Microsoft and extract them the server.  Launch a Command Prompt and run the Exchange Server 2007 schema update.

setup /PrepareAD

Applying the Exchange Server 2010 Schema Update

You must perform these steps with an account that is a member of the Enterprise Admins and Schema Admins groups.  The server that you run the update from must reside in the same Active Directory Site as the Schema Master.

Download the Exchange Server 2010 files from Microsoft and extract them the server. Launch a Command Prompt and run the Exchange Server 2010 schema update.

setup /PrepareAD

If you have an Active Directory with multiple Domain Controllers you should wait for the new schema to replicate throughout the network before proceeding.