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Active Directory & Exchange Server Upgrade Experience

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Hello Wiki,

I want to just share an experience about Windows Server Active Directory Domain Services upgrading project with Exchange Server 2013 to 2016.

Here is the checklist when you decide to upgrade your environment which contains ADDS and Exchange Server.

  • First of all if your environment have a backup software try to make a backup or an snapshot from your servers
  • The second thing you have to do is to decide which version of product are you planning to upgrade
  • Check all the new update list and new features in Microsoft’s website for the related product
  • Make ready all installation files
  • Check prerequisites and install them ( For Exchange Server you have to install .Net 4.7 or above and Unified Cimmunications Manager API 4.0 or above
  • At the end you need at least 12 hour for the whole operation [ Although it depend on your mailbox and users size but having 12 hour in mind will make your plan to continue easily ]

Active Directory Domain Controllers :

There is 2 way to upgrade your Domain Controllers – First one is in-place upgrade which is attaching an ISO or putting a Windows Server CD/DVD/Flash USB to your server and starting your server upgrade. And the second one is adding a new Windows Server last edition as a Domain Controller to your Active Directory Environment.

I’d rather in-place upgrade because I though it is a low risk upgrade method in an enterprise environment and I started attaching ISO files on my Domain Controllers which is hosted in a virtual environment and started in-place upgrade. Automatically, It starts with FORESTPREP / DOMAINPREP when you click on the setup.exe and prepares your Active Directory environment for upgrade.

On the other hand, you can also choose adding a new Windows Server as a Domain Controller to your envinronment I did not choose that one because I red so many articles about Domain Controllers replication issue after doing this method, also I did a test with cloning all my environment to another virtual environment and I got fail with replication because of that I chose in-place upgrade.

Exchange Server :

In this scenario I learnt a great experience with upgrading Exchange server with mailboxes. It is not that a hard thing upgrading your Exchange Server environment to a new version. Because Exchange Server Migration Tool do it for you easily in the background while you and your users sending/receiving mails and they even don’t know they are upgrading to a new version.

I started with adding a new Exchange Server 2016 to our environment installed Exchange Server 2016 and when I started to open Administrator ECP panel in order to configure my server I got an error code HTTP 500.

It was just took my 2 weeks to seach whole Microsoft forums and internet to see why this happens and why I cannot open ECP admin panel in my new server. But now it fits in 1 row to whom want to upgrade their Exchange Server. After adding and installing your new version Exchange Server 2016 the first thing you need to do is to migrating your Administrator account Mailbox to the new Exchange Server. Then the ECP panel will open smoothly and you can start configuring your server.

I know this was a little experience about ADDS and Exchange Server upgrade, however hope it’ll help Wiki