This is the second part of installing Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 on Windows Server 2008. You can see the scenario and the required features and server roles here: Installing Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 on Windows Server 2008 - Part 1.

Pre-installation

Before you can start the installation you have to install the following components:

• .NET Framework 2.0
• Microsoft Management Console
• Microsoft Windows PowerShell

You can either install the PowerShell by using the command line or you can use the Server Manager to add the required PowerShell feature. If you want to use the command line run the following command:

• ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell

You can also use the Server Manager:

Finally we can start the installation of Exchange Server 2007.

Installation

• Click next at the introduction screen.
• You can then turn on or off the error reporting.

• Choose the typical installation of Exchange Server.
• If you have Outlook 2003 clients in your environment choose yes, if not choose no.

• After that your system will be analyzed if all required features are installed.
• If all required features are installed you shouldn't the the following screen with the red bullets.
• If you get the error message "Setup cannot detect an SMTP or Send connector with an address space of '*'." you can refer to the following article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/556055/en-us.

• Now you can start the installation process.

• After finishing the installation you have successfully installed Exchange Server 2007 in your environment.

Please not that this is not a best practice article on how to deploy Exchange Server in a production environment.

In this article I will describe how to install Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 on Windows Server 2008. Scenario: I have installed Windows Server 2008 and configured the Active Directory role. Installing Exchange Server on a Domain Controller might not be suitable for a production environment. ;)

Prerequisites

Before we can start the installation we have to configure the Windows Server 2008 installation. Depending on the Exchange Server roles you have to install different Windows Server 2008 roles and features.

Exchange Server roles

These are the roles offered by Exchange Server 2007:

• Hub Transport Server Role: Used for message routing.
• Client Access Server Role: Provides the Outlook Web Access Interface.
• Mailbox Server Role: Used for hosting mailbox stores.
• Unified Messaging Role: Interface between Exchange and a compatible PBX phone system.
• Edge Transport Role: Used to filter out viruses and spam before routing them to the internal network.

Exchange Server roles prerequisites

Since I don't need the Unified Messaging Role and the Edge Transport Role I will only install the prerequisites for the following roles:

Hub Transport Role Prerequisites

• IIS6 Metabase Compatibility
• IIS6 Management Console

Client Access Role Prerequisites

• World Wide Web
• IIS6 Metabase Compatibility
• IIS6 Management Console
• IIS7 Dynamic Content Compression
• IIS7 Static Content Compression
• IIS7 Basic Authentication
• IIS7 Windows Authentication
• IIS7 Digest Authentication

Mailbox Role Prerequisites

• World Wide Web
• IIS7 Dynamic Content Compression
• IIS7 Static Content Compression

Installation of Exchange Server roles prerequisites

• Select the Web Server (IIS) role and add the required features.

• Select the ASP.NET feature and all the checked features you can see in the pictures.

• After that you can finish the installation.

Now you have all the Windows Server 2008 roles and features configured so you can start the installation of Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1.

As I have written several times I use a virtual environment to develop SharePoint 2007 solutions. Some of the articles are:

• Virtual PC 2007 and missing cursor
• Hyper-V - Virtual Server and Loopback Adapter - Part1 
• Installing MOSS 2007 on Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 - Part 1: Overview

Right know I switch between Virtual Server 2005 and Hyper-V. If you are thinking about running SharePoint 2007 in a Hyper-V virtual environment the following articles by Microsoft  are a must read:

• Using SharePoint Products and Technologies in a Hyper-V virtual environment
• Performance and capacity requirements for Hyper-V

Hyper-V basics

I have written about the basics at my companies SharePoint blog: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is the Hypervisor based Virtualization function of Windows Server 2008. As you know Virtualization has a lot of advantages like running more than one server on a physical machine or higher security when separating server functionality. Hyper-V uses the native Virtualization method where the Virtual Machine Manager runs directly on the hardware. This is a huge performance gain compared to hosted Virtualization where the Virtual Machine Manager gets the resources from the operating system.

If Hyper-V is activated the partition with the host operating system (parent partition) is treated like the partitions with the virtual machines (child partitions). Both of them consume resources from the Hypervisor. The Virtualization stack, the process and the wmi provider for managing the virtual machines are located in the parent partition.

Supported Hypervisor technology

SharePoint Products and Technologies supports

• Hyper-V and all
• hypervisor technologies which are certified by Microsoft through the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).

Hyper-V prerequisites

Hyper-V is a role that can be turned on if your Windows Server 2008 installation meets the following requirements:

• The OS runs on a machine with a x64-based processor.
• Your machine supports hardware-assisted Virtualization.
• You have hardware data execution protection turned on.

Hyper-V recommendations

The following recommendations are written in the articles Using SharePoint Products and Technologies in a Hyper-V virtual environment and Performance and capacity requirements for Hyper-V. For more details please read the articles. A short summary:

In general

• Use Windows Server 2008 as the guest operating system.
• Install integration components (ICS).
• Install the Hyper-V update for Windows Server 2008 (KB950050) on the host and guests.
• "Do not use the Hyper-V snapshot feature on virtual servers that are connected to a SharePoint Products and Technologies server farm. This is because the timer services and the search applications might become unsynchronized during the snapshot process and once the snapshot is finished, errors or inconsistencies can arise. Detach any server from the farm before taking a snapshot of that server."

Networking

• Use IPv4 as the network protocol for Hyper-V guests and disable IPv6. (Update 18. November: I don't recommend this when running an Exchange Server 2007 on your image)
• Use Private or internal networks. "Private networks and internal networks do not use the physical network card or cable, so communications are faster and network congestion is minimized. You can take advantage of this network performance gain by creating an external network for the Web front-end servers and by creating a private or internal network for the application and SQL Server database servers."

CPU and hard disk

• Use a fixed-size virtual disk for hosting the Index role or SQL Server. You can use a dynamically-sized disk for hosting the Query role or Web Server role.
• "Do not use more virtual CPUs than there are physical CPUs on the Hyper-V host computer. Although Hyper-V will allow you to allocate more virtual CPUs than the number of physical CPUs, this causes performance issues because the hypervisor software has to swap out CPU contexts."

In Part1 I described the scenario consisting of a Loopback adapter which didn't work after installing Hyper-V.

Before installing the Hyper-V role I selected to use my Loopback Adapter as a "Hyper-V virtual network". After Windows Server 2008 configured the role I had a new network adapter with a similar naming as my Loopback Adapter. I don't know if this one was newly created or the original Loopback Adapter was modified. I have renamed the "new" adapter to clearly identify it as a Hyper-V virtual network adapter.

Anyway I had the "original" Loopback Adapter with all the items before I installed Hyper-V. All items? No, because my non Hyper-V Loopback Adapter had limited connectivity. As you can see in the next picture the "Virtual Machine Network Service" was not checked.

You have to check this item and then close the network connections. After that you need to recreate your Virtual Server 2005 virtual network because it is now missing. Click "Create..." and select your non Hyper-V Loopback Adapter. Now you can connect from your laptop to your image and from your image to the Internet.

If you still have limited connectivity reboot your host...

My daily working scenario looks like this: I use a laptop and Virtual Server 2005 in order to run a SharePoint environment and to develop SharePoint solutions. In order to connect from my laptop to the image and from inside the image to the Internet / Intranet (without wasting an IP address) I installed a Loopback Adapter. Ben describes how to do this: Configuring NAT via using the Microsoft Loopback Adapter and Internet Connection Sharing. The following picture shows the configuration:

In my environment the Broadcom adapter shares the Internet connection (ICS) with my Loopback Adapter. After installing Hyper-V my Loopback Adapter always showed limited connectivity. As you can see the adapter has limited connectivity and the small picture taken from inside the image shows that an IP address can't be assigned.

Here's the reason why... Part2

If your working with Virtual PC it may happen that your mouse cursor disappears when you move it over an input field. In the picture below the cursor is directly positioned over the password input field...

If you want to have your cursor back you can try one of the following options:

• Start -> Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointers -> Change cursor scheme to „Windows Black Scheme“
• Right-click on the desktop, select Properties -> Select the Settings tab -> Press Advanced -> Press Troubleshoot -> Set the Hardware Acceleration slider to one step less than Full -> Press Apply and OK (not recommended because your cursor can start studdering)
• Replacing the „beam“ cursors in „c:\windows\cursors“ with the one from Vista (didn’t work for me)