Chitaranjan Panda: How to prepare the Exchange Server

Following are the important considerations that have to be done before installing the Exchange Server

Designate a account for exchange installation with the following permission
Check the hardware requirements before installing Exchange server 2003
Installing Important services – following are the important services
Run the forest prep - extends the Active Directory schema by adding classes and attributes
Run the Domain prep - adds the necessary objects for Exchange administration

1. Designate a account for exchange installation with the following permission

Enterprise Administrator
Domain Administrator
Schema Administrator
Local Administrator

2. Check the hardware requirements before installing Exchange server 2003

Processor – Pentium 3 or above
Memory - 512
Disk space – 200 MB for system file and 500 MB for database files
Partition – NTFS
NIC – Two for single exchange in small organization

3. Installing Important services – following are the important services

Microsoft .NET Framework
Microsoft ASP .NET
Internet Information Services (IIS)
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP)

4. Run the forest prep - extends the Active Directory schema by adding classes and attributes

5. Run the Domain prep - adds the necessary objects for Exchange administration

After running the Domain preparation, 2 new objects will be created

Exchange Domain Servers

Exchange Enterprise Servers

Note:

If you haven't run /forestprep or /domainprep they will run when you run the standard setup (if your account has the necessary rights).

Step by step procedures to prepare exchange server

Step 1: Designate an account for exchange installation

Go to the properties of the user account, on the Member Of Tab add the above permission

Step 2: check the Hardware prerequisites consideration

Check the hardware status mentioned above

Step 3: Installing important services

To know the installation and configuration procedures of important services, review the how to install IIS page

Step 4: Running forest Prep

Forestprep extends the Active Directory schema by adding classes and attributes used by Exchange.

Run Setup.exe /forestprep once on the forest root domain.
To run /forestprep, the account you use must have the following roles:

§ Schema Administrator

§ Enterprise Administrator

§ Domain Administrator

§ Local machine Administrator

1. Go to start ->Run -> type CMD. Command prompt will open, in that navigate to the drive wher your exchange installation files are present

2. Type setup.exe /forestprep

3. On the warning page click ok to continue

4. On the welcome page click next to start the forest prep operation

5. Click I agree and click next on the License agreement page

6. By default on the component selection page forest prep will automatically selected, review and click next

7. Check whether the administrative account pointed is what the designated account with administrator permission, by default it will select the login account