Installing Exchange 2016 - Part 1

In this post, we will talk regarding Installing Exchange 2016.

This is 2 part post, in part one, we will talk regarding "Requirements and Prerequisites".

Exchange 2016 system requirements

Component	Requirement
Domain controllers	All domain controllers in the forest need to be running one of the following: Windows Server 2016 Standard or Datacenter Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard or Datacenter Windows Server 2012 Standard or Datacenter Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard or Enterprise Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter RTM or later Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, or Datacenter
Active Directory forest	The Active Directory forest functionality level needs to be at Windows Server 2008 or higher.
DNS namespace support	Exchange 2016 supports the following domain name system (DNS) namespaces: Contiguous Noncontiguous Single label domains Disjoint For more information about DNS namespaces supported by Exchange, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2269838, Microsoft Exchange compatibility with Single Label Domains, Disjoined Namespaces, and Discontiguous Namespaces.
IPv6 support	In Exchange 2016, IPv6 is supported only when IPv4 is also installed and enabled. If Exchange 2016 is deployed in this configuration, and the network supports IPv4 and IPv6, all Exchange servers can send data to and receive data from devices, servers, and clients that use IPv6 addresses. For more information, see IPv6 support in Exchange 2013.

Once the Hardware and Software requirements are in place we are ready to install the pre-requisites.

We need the latest version of .Net . I had installed .Net 4.6.2.

We can just install the Remote Server Administration like shown below if we just want to install the Mangement tools.

Because we are installing the Mailbox role we need to run the below command

"Install-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Server-Media-Foundation, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface, RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt, RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation, RSAT-ADDS"

 

Post installing the pre-requisites we are ready to prepare the domain for Exchange 2016 Installation.

For testing purpose, I prepared the domain and AD using Exchange 2013 installation bits and later used Exchange 2016 bits to perform the same steps to see if we are getting any error. We were not getting any error as expected.

Also if in your org you don't have Exchange 2013, and you might need to bring in Exchange 2013 at some stage then its required to have a install of Exchange 2013 with all roles in it. If Exchange 2016 is installed in a environement where there is no Exchange 2013 then at later stage we might not be able to install Exchange 2013 in that environment.

Now Actually updated the environment for 2016 Schema

Now we have performed the below

• Installed .Net on the computer
• Installed the Pre-requisite features
• Prepared
  • Schema
  • Domain
  • All domains

Now we are ready to install Exchange 2016 in our environment. In part 2 we will cover that.

More Information:  

Exchange 2016 system requirements

From <https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996719(v=exchg.160).aspx>

Exchange 2016 prerequisites

From <https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(v=exchg.160).aspx>

-   Praveen Kumar E