Both Exchange SP1 and Windows Server 2008 have been in production for quite some time and earned their reputation as stable and dependable products.

In this screencast, we will demonstrate Step-by-Step the installation of Exchange SP1 on Windows Server 2008. A couple of words about the network configuration in our demo: We will be deploying a new Exchange 2007 organization. Transitioning to Exchange 2007 is going to be demonstrated in a separate Screencast. The Domain and Forest functional levels are Windows Server 2008, and we will be installing a x64 version of Exchange 2007. In addition, we will be deploying the so called typical installation – the Exchange Server will host the Hub Transport, Client Access, and Mailbox server roles.

A specific moment when deploying a new Exchange Organization and preparing Active Directory Schema and Domain on a Windows Server 2008 is that you have to install Active Directory Domain Services remote management tools in advance. The installation of all the prerequisites is demonstrated in details in Step1 of our Screencast. To make your life easier, we have placed all the commands for the installation of Windows Server 2008 operating system prerequisites for a computer that will host the Hub Transport, Client Access, and Mailbox server roles in a batch file. You can download the batch file from here.
You will also notice that during the setup process we get a warning – “Setup cannot detect an SMTP or Send connector with an address space of *”. We will create manually New Internet Send Connector as you can see in Step3.

Verifying the Exchange 2007 installation is an important part of the installation process, and it is outlined in details in Step3 too.
A final note for the enthusiasts running Core Server and RODC – you can not install Exchange Server 2007 on these types of Windows Server 2008 installation. Also, only the Exchange 2007 SP1 is supported on Windows Server 2008.

Step 1 In this step, we install Active Directory Domain Services remote management tools and the necessary prerequisites for Exchange 2007 SP1 installation on Windows Server 2008.

Step 2 We demonstrate the actual installation of Exchange 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008. You can see the different stages of the setup process – the Readiness Check (checking for the Organization and Exchange Server roles prerequisites), AD and domain preparation, the installation of the Exchange Management tools and Hub Transport, Client Access and Mailbox roles.

Step 3 Finally, we demonstrate different approaches for validating the Exchange Server 2007 installation. You will see how to create Custom View in Event Viewer. Also, we create a New Internet Send Connector using the Exchange Management Console.