Exchange 12 Beta Install

Microsoft’s Exchange 12 Beta arrived in my TechNet pack, and I had a box on which to install it. Why not? The Beta supports 32-bit hardware; production versions will not, according to the release notes. Installation was only a minor pain. My prerequisites, dot.Net 2.0, IIS and ASP were installed, but Microsoft Management Console, version 3, was not. Fortunately, the installer GUI had a link to MMC 3.0, just not the right one. The one you want for Exchange 12 is MMC 3.0 Pre-Release (RC1 Refresh). It’s mo’ Beta.

First install: everything worked except OWA and SMTP, which was kind of a big deal. However, I had done several test configurations on ASP and created so many Application pools running under different contexts that I had probably messed it up totally, so I uninstalled Exchange 12 and IIS.

Second install: the “client access” server install returned an error. I uninstalled Exchange and deleted every registry key that had Exchange or it’s path in it.

Third install: no errors, OWA worked, I could connect from Outlook. I couldn’t yet send or receive mail, though, because I hadn’t configured any connectors. Looking into the new Bridgehead server role configuration on the Exchange Management Console, as it’s now called, I saw only a blank screen. The help file explains how to use it to configure inbound and outbound connectors, but there was nothing there. Back to the release notes. The EMC does not yet implement a GUI for configuring connectors, so I had to start entering commands on a line.

Which brings us to the new way of administering Exchange 12: the command line.

Next to the EMC in the start menu is something called the Exchange Management Shell. I had to look at the help and start learning the new command structure. Fortunately, the release notes mention that you might not want to use the example given in the help file that creates an open relay for all.

Here’s what a command looks like:

New-ReceiveConnector -Name Internet2 -Type FromInternet -Bindings:10.10.10.202:25 -AnonymousAllowed:true -AdvertisedDomain xxxx.net -RemoteIPRanges
0.0.0.0-255.255.255.255

Once you’ve done a few commands, you’ll get it. And when you want to tweak one item, you don’t have re-do the whole command. You can do just one in a command. So try the Beta of Exchange 12 if you like, just be
prepared to learn a new command language.

One other thing: I did use the EMC to move the Information Stores, which was really easy. It dismounted them automatically, moved them, and remounted automatically.