Installing Exchange Server 2003

After all the preparation and planning is complete, it is time to install the first Exchange Server 2003 system in the forest. The user who installs the first Exchange Server 2003 system in a domain must have Exchange Full Administrator rights at the organizational level. Unlike Exchange 2000 Server, however, subsequent Exchange Server 2003 servers can be installed by users who have Exchange Full Administrator rights at the administrative group level. These rights can be delegated to the appropriate accounts via the Exchange System Manager (ESM).

To begin the installation, you can use the link from the Exchange Deployment Tools checklist or run setup.exe from the command line in the \setup\i386\ directory of the Exchange Server 2003 installation media. The Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard begins, as shown in Figure 2.13.

Figure 2.13. The Exchange Installation Wizard screen.

After you begin the installation, you are confronted with the license agreement and are then asked to enter the product ID key (though no key is required with the evaluation version of the software). You are then presented with the Component Selection screen, as shown in Figure 2.14.

Figure 2.14. Exchange Component Selection screen of the Microsoft Exchange Installation Wizard.

The options on the Exchange Component Selection screen are not highly detailed like the options in installing Windows Server 2003. Essentially, you are able to enable and disable particular services after you have installed Exchange. For the most part, a typical Exchange installation is sufficient.

The Exchange Server 2003 connectors are covered in Chapter 3, which deals with installing Exchange in preexisting Exchange environments as well as environments that contain other messaging systems.

After you have selected your components, you proceed to the Installation Type screen. This queries whether you want to create a new Exchange organization (see Figure 2.15) or join an existing Exchange Server 5.5 organization. If you create a new Exchange organization, subsequently installed Exchange Server 2003 systems join this organization automatically. Joining existing Exchange Server 5.5 and 2000 organizations is covered in Chapter 3.

Figure 2.15. Creating a new Exchange Server 2003 organization.

Organizations are different from routing and administrative groups. You can have several routing and administrative groups within a single organization. Every Exchange Server 2003 system installed within the forest is a member of this organization. Organizations must have names between 1 and 63 characters. Characters that can be used in the name include A through Z, a through z, 0 through 9, the space, and the hyphen symbol. It is important to note that the organization is created during the installation of the first Exchange Server 2003 system (as shown in Figure 2.16), not during the ForestPrep process.

Figure 2.16. Select a name for the new Exchange Server 2003 organization.

After you have created the new organization, you are reminded about the licensing conditions of Exchange Server 2003. Each client that accesses the server must have an Exchange Server 2003 Client Access License (CAL). You must agree to this condition for the installation to continue.

You are then presented with an Installation Summary screen, which confirms the options you chose on the Exchange Server 2003 Component Selection screen. After you click the Next button, the installation proceeds. You are not required to reboot the server after installation has completed.

Troubleshooting the Exchange Server 2003 Installation Process

If the network, environment, and conditions mentioned earlier in this chapter are not met, the Exchange Server 2003 installation process will fail. Knowing the reason for the failure and how to correct it is a useful skill for a candidate attempting the 70-284 exam.

In general, the Exchange Server 2003 installation process provides informative error messages explaining why setup is unable to complete. Several of these error messages have been reproduced in Figure 2.17.

Figure 2.17. An Exchange Server 2003 installation message indicating that several tasks must be completed before installation can continue.

Using Invalid Administrator Accounts to Install Exchange

If the account used to install the first Exchange server in the forest is not the account that was delegated the appropriate permission when ForestPrep was originally run, then the installation will fail. To resolve this problem, you have two options. First, you can use the account that was originally delegated the appropriate permission when ForestPrep was run. Second, you can delegate the Exchange Full Administrator permission to the new account via the Exchange Management Tools (as shown in Figure 2.18), which can be installed independently of Exchange.

Figure 2.18. Delegating the Exchange Full Administrator permission to other accounts via the Exchange Management Tools.

After it has been established that ForestPrep and DomainPrep have run correctly and that the account performing the installation has the requisite Exchange Server 2003 permissions, the next thing to check is that services such as ASP.NET, SMTP, NNTP, and WWW Publishing are installed, and that these services are actually running. If an error has occurred that is stopping these services from starting properly, this error needs to be resolved before Exchange Server 2003 will install correctly.

Nonresponsive Critical Services

In some situations, even though you have installed the SMTP, NNTP, ASP.NET, and WWW Publishing Services, the Exchange Server 2003 installation informs you that the services are not available. The reason for this might be that Exchange Server 2003 has been installed in a domain running at the Windows Server 2003 functional level. If Exchange Server 2003 is installed on a server in a domain running at the Windows Server 2003 functional level, several services such as the WWW Publishing Service are disabled via policy. You might need to alter how the policy influences these services to get Exchange Server 2003 to install properly.

Dealing with Unsigned Nondriver Files

If Exchange Server 2003 is being installed on a Windows 2000 server that has a security policy blocking the installation of unsigned, nondriver files, the setup routine will fail. This policy needs to be temporarily disabled until the installation routine is completed at which time it can be reinstated.

Problems with RAM

Problems can also occur when installing Exchange Server 2003 on a server that has recently had its RAM upgraded to more than a gigabyte. This problem occurs when the store process starts and an event with an id of "9665" is written to the event log. To rectify this problem, the boot.ini file on the server hosting Exchange needs to be updated with the /3GB and /USERVA switches.

For example,

 multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Enterprise" /fastdetect  /3GB /USERVA 

Examining Error Logs

Some events during the installation of Exchange Server 2003 are written to the application log. The application log on the system on which you installed Exchange Server 2003 might provide other clues as to why the installation failed. If this does not work, the final place to look is in a text file in the root directory of the server. This file is named Exchange Server Setup Progress; an example of this file is shown in Figure 2.19. The setup program writes this log in text file format to the root directory of the system drive. This log records everything that occurs during the installation of Exchange Server 2003. Closely examining this log might point to why the installation has failed.

Figure 2.19. The Exchange Server Setup Progress log might provide clues as to why an installation has failed.