Recipe2.10.Checking the Expiry Date of an Evaluation Version of Exchange

Recipe 2.10. Checking the Expiry Date of an Evaluation Version of Exchange

Problem

You're using the evaluation version of Exchange and want to know how long you have before you hit the timeout period.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

Launch the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).
Expand the Administrative Groups node, then the AG that contains the server whose status you want to check.
Select the Servers container. The righthand pane contains a list of servers in that AG.
Find the target server and look at the date in its Modified column. This date indicates the last time that Exchange setup was run on the server. As long as no one has rerun setup since the original install date, adding 120 days to this date will tell you when the server will expire. This date can also be viewed by looking in the Exchange setup.log file on the root of the Exchange installation drive.

Using the command-line

Change to the root directory of the system drive; on most systems, this will be c:\..
Use findstr to scan the Exchange setup log file for install operations; the example below will give you a list, with line numbers, of where the string Starting Exchange appears (the actual string will be Starting Exchange X setup on Y at DT, where X is the build number, Y is the OS build, and DT is the date and time):
```
> type "Exchange Server Setup Progress.log" | findstr /n /c:"Starting Exchange" *.log
```
Oddly, findstr doesn't understand Unicode characters, so you'll have to preprocess the log files by first filtering them through the built-in type utility to render them in plain ASCII. This may produce unpredictable results when run on non-English systems.
Run findstr again to look for the string "ID:62233" (the actual phrase is "This is an evaluation copy of Microsoft Exchange Server; it expires in 120 daysID:62233"), like this:
```
> type "Exchange Server Setup Progress.log" | findstr /n /c:"ID:62233" *.log
```
Compare the line numbers from steps 3 and 4 to ensure that you get the correct start date; add 120 days to that date and you'll know when your server is set to expire.

Discussion

Both of these solutions depend on the Exchange setup utility helpfully recording the time and type of each installation in the setup log. By checking it, you can determine when the server will expire if the setup log file hasn't been removed. If the log file is gone, you'll only be able to find out when the Exchange server refuses to mount databases, or you can try to deduce the installation time by looking at the time/date stamp on Exchange installation directories.