Hello All,
My consulting company's largest client has been slated for an Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 Transition with CoExistence for over a year.
Various business flow and scheduling issues have put the kibosh on doing the upgrade until now.
Here is a simplified description of the environment
- A flat switched gigabit ethernet network, a single AD site
- 2 Domain Controllers running Server 2012 R2, both are Global Catalog servers, one serves DHCP for the scope
- Domain and Forest functional level are both Server 2003
- Existing Exchange 2003 Std org running on one Server 2003 R2 box
- Exchange org is in Native Mode
- DCDIAG is clean, no errors
- FSMO Roles in place on the most powerful / new of the two DCs
- Reliable Time Source configured, no kerberos problems, network has been humming along happily for some time now.
Synopsis of the problem:
Over the past two years, I have done a lot of homework in preparation for this project
I have watched and re-watched every Technet Webcast on Exchange 2003 thru 2007 as they came out, just in case the client gave the go-ahead for a server / exchange upgrade.
Though I had my first child about 2 years ago, and the time has been very short for watching webcasts in my "spare time" I have blocked out the time and have started catching up on the latest Technet Webcasts on Exchange 2010.
My intention is to follow the process described in this excellent Transition Guide:
http://l.exchangeserverpro.com/exchange-2003-2010-migration-guide/
As well as good information found in various blogs and Harold Wong's excellent Technet Webcast.
Funny thing is, The more involved parts of the process are not what I am having problems with (I have successfully deployed Exchange 2010 in a blue sky deployment already, and 2007 in a Fork-lift Migration to a new Forest )
Now that all the preparation work is done, all the servers are ready to go, and AD DS is happy, I took the very first step in the deployment and:
The Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer thinks our environment cannot support Exchange 2010 Servers....
After running the Exchange 2010 compatibility check, the scan shows this critical error:
Active Directory site 'Default-First-Site-Name' does not contain any global catalog servers running Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or later. This will prevent Exchange 2010 servers from being installed into site 'Default-First-Site-Name'.
The compatibility matrix suggests otherwise:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff728623%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx
Under: Supported Active Directory Environments:
Operating System Environment: shows that Windows Server 2012 R2 Active Directory Servers are supported by Exchange 2010 SP3 RU5 or later
Domain Functional Level: Server 2003 domain functional level is supported for Exchange 2010 SP3 RU5 or later
This blog post contains the matrix as it was before the End Of Support for Exchange passed in April 2014:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/rmilne/archive/2013/09/17/exchange-support-for-windows-server-2012-r2.aspx#pi63079=1
I should be good to go, yes?
The customer is entirely dependent on email for their style of business, and love the control they have with the servers being onsite, so hosted exchange was never on the table.
I am hoping to have the least number of show-stopping surprises possible on the day we finally are able to schedule a necessary outage for the introduction of the new Exchange 2010 Server into the Coexistence phase
In this blog post, Martina Miskovic's "Answer" may be accurate, but it is not necessarily helpful:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/exchange/en-US/c0fa92d3-8b02-4e6e-af53-f308b0d035d4/pre-deployment-analyser-error-exchange-upgrade-2003-on-windows-2003-to-2010-on-windows-server-2012?forum=exchange2010
Namely that:
"The rules in Pre-Deployment Analyzer hasn't been updated to include Windows Server 2012 Domain Controllers and that is why you get the error"
Ok, bottom line.
Is this error indicative of a problem that will also cause the Bare Metal installation of Exchange 2010 SP3 to fail?
The latest Rollup for Exchange 2003 SP3 is Rollup 7
Will I be able to install Exchange 2010 SP3 and then Rollup 7 successfully considering the described AD environment?
The last remaining Windows 2003 former DC is still attached as a member server to the domain, and is available for dcpromo if needed, Should I go that route?
Thanks for any enlightenment any of you might be able to offer!
Chris.
"Time is an illusion, Lunchtime, doubly so..." - Ford Prefect