Day 1
I have started to look at Exchange 12 Beta 1 which Microsoft have recently released as a closed Beta. As I go through the product I will try and pass on information that I find worthwhile.
I have installed a new environment to test it initially rather than introduce it into mine and break anything. It is meant to be able to co-exist with Exchange 2003 but I wanted to play it safe initially. The environment that I have set up consists of a Windows 2003 Standard server R2 running in a VMware environment. This server was made to be a DC for a new domain. The Exchange server is running on an AMD 64 machine and is running Windows 2003 standard R2 X64. This machine was made to be a member of the new domain.
Its the first time I have had a chance to look at R2 so will be nice to get some time to have a look at some of the new features over the next few weeks.
I’m not going to go into the prerequisites of EX 12 too much as these may change in the final product. Some of the ones to note are:
- The final release will be 64bit only although as in beta 1 there probably will be a 32bit version for testing and training.
- The final version will be on DVD only
- Schema Master must be Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or greater
- Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
- MMC 3.0 RC1 or later
- IIS was required but one change is that NNTP is not required and Exchange will not install if NNTP has been selected.
Most of today was spent messing around getting hold of the right product keys and server images and then building the environment. I had to leg it up to my parents this night but was able to complete the installation from their house in the early hours. The installation went quite smooth, no major issues just a few gripes about hotfixes that were needed but once I had got those sorted I left it too it and went to bed.