Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Installing Exchange 2007 on a single Server 2008 in an existing Windows 2003 domain

We are working on an Exchange migration.

By we, I mean I. :(

The scenario is everything on one server, with replication to our remote DR site. The users are 95% remote-via-internet users using RPC over HTTP. We are consolidating from a hegemony of SBS servers, Postfix, and outsourced providers.

Lessons learned in training.
Prerequisites are Powershell and IIS.
There are no send connectors by default.
Run setup /prepareAD
Requires x64 architecture.

Lessons learned by doing.
"Actual" Prerequisites...
Roles .. IIS Defaults PLUS
- IIS Metabase compatibility
- IIs 6 Management Console
- IIS 7 Dynamic Content Compression
- IIS 7 Basic Authentication
- IIS 7 Windows Authentication
- IIS 7 Digest Authentication
Features..
PowerShell
Active Directory Management Tools
RPC/HTTP Proxy

Setup /preparead doesn't actually work. Just run setup.
Right-click on setup and select Run as Administrator

"Things that would have been relevant to me yesterday."
A wildcard certificate (*.foo.com) will NOT work for Outlook Anywhere.
A multi-host "UCC" certificate is $200-$300.

The MS Exchange System Attendant is not set to Auto-start.
...RPC/HTTP requires the system attendant.

RPC/HTTP only listens on the IPV6 interface by default.
...Comment out the [:::] localhost line in the hosts file to fix it.
... ... Unchecking the IPV6 protocol box does NOT fix it.

Autodiscover is good!
... Autodiscover.foo.com should be one of the names on your UCC certificate

Exmerge is no more!
... and export-mailbox only works on the 32 bit version of the exchange tools, ergo it must be installed on a different box.

http://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com
... Web-based tests for exchange connectivity. Beta by Microsoft
... ... Use the back button and you get an ugly exception error.
... ... ... Dark green on blue captcha is a bitch for color-blind people.

I now have one mailbox up. Happy happy. :D

Only 650 to go. :(

-ellie