Recipe17.2.Installing the First Exchange Server

Recipe 17.2. Installing the First Exchange Server

Problem

You want to install the first Exchange Server of an Exchange organization.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

Install and configure prerequisite services. See the Discussion section for more on these services.
Log on to a server that is member of an Exchange-enabled domain with an account that is a member of the delegated group in Recipe 17.1. This account should also be a local administrator of the server.
Go to the Windows Update site and install any critical security patches. Click on Start
Insert the Exchange Server CD into the CD-ROM drive.
On the Start menu, click Run, type <driveletter>:\setup\i386\setup.exe, and click OK. <driveletter> is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive. The path to setup.exe may vary for certain versions of Exchange Server, such as MSDN or Select versions.
On the Welcome screen, click Next.
On the License Agreement screen, read through the agreement and if you agree, click I agree and click Next.
If the Product Identification screen is presented, enter your Exchange Server product key and click Next.

This screen may not appear for certain versions of Exchange Server, such as the MSDN or Select versions.
On the Component Selection screen in the Action column, verify that the action selected is Typical. Verify that the install path is correct for your installation and click Next. It is a common practice is to load Exchange onto a drive other than the system drive.
On Installation Type screen, verify that Create a new Exchange Organization is selected and click Next.
On the Organization Name screen, enter the name you want for your Exchange organization and click Next. You can leave the default name of First Organization or name it something specific to your installation (e.g., RALLENCORPMAIL).
On the License Agreement screen, select I agree and then click Next.
Review the Installation Summary screen and click Next.
On the Completing the Microsoft Exchange Wizard screen, click Finish.
Download and install the latest Exchange 2003 Service Pack. As of the time of this writing, that is Service Pack 1. See Recipe 17.4 for more on installing Exchange service packs.

Using a command-line interface

You cannot install the first Exchange Server of the Organization via the command line.

Discussion

The first Exchange server you install is special. This is because in addition to installing the Exchange Server software on the server, the process is also creating Active Directory objects in the Configuration container for the Exchange organization. As such, the installation is slightly different from any other Exchange Server installation you will do in the forest (see Recipe 17.3). The difference is in steps 10 and 11, which will not be present for any other Exchange Server Installations within the Exchange organization. In these steps, you will choose whether to create a new Exchange organization or join an existing Exchange 5.5 organization. The additional considerable amount of work involved in joining an existing Exchange 5.5 organization is outside the scope of this chapter. See the Exchange Server Cookbook (O'Reilly) for more information.

Exchange Server has several software prerequisites. You must have these prerequisites in place prior to installing Exchange, or Exchange will refuse to install. The prerequisites vary by operating system.

The Windows 2000 SP3+ prerequisites are:

Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack (adminpak.msi)
Internet Information Services (IIS)
World Wide Web Publishing (WWW) Service
Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) Service
Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) Service

Window Server 2003 requires the Windows 2000 prerequisites plus these additional items:

.NET Framework
ASP.NET

See Chapter 12 for more details on the installation of IIS.