Recently I needed to quickly install Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008 to test the latest IMF Tune v4.0 release. In the hurry I tried to take a little shortcut. As often happens when working late at night, I ended up frustrated trying to figure out why was the Exchange installation failing in the middle.
So today's article is a walk through my "mistake". Before going further, do appreciate that here I am not presenting some best practice installation. This was a test environment with everything installed on one machine. The installation was performed using Windows 2008 RTM and Exchange 2007 SP1. This is important since installing Exchange 2007 RTM and earlier is not supported on Windows 2008.
Initial Installation Steps
Installing Windows 2008 itself, was straight forward. On completing, the Initial Configuration Tasks greeted me.
From here I clicked on 'Configure networking', and proceeded to assign the server a fixed IP. In Windows 2008 both IPv4 and IPv6 are installed by default. Here I configured IPv4 with a fixed IP and cleared the IPv6 checkbox. After all why should I bother with IPv6 on a test machine that will mostly run in a vacuum? I will tell you straight away that this was my downfall! With IPv6 disabled the installation failed. We will see what happened shortly.
Next we turn the server into a Domain Controller. We do this starting from Initial Configuration Tasks | Add Roles | Active Directory Domain Services
On completing the wizard we are alerted to run dcpromo.exe.
So we close the wizard and run dcpromo, which will also install the DNS server for us. I will skip these steps since there is nothing new here.
Following a restart, we are ready to focus on the Exchange 2007 prerequisites. Here we get hold of the Microsoft TechNet article, How to Install Exchange 2007 SP1 Prerequisites on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista. The exact set of prerequisites depends on the Exchange roles being installed. I suggest you to read and follow the TechNet article to the letter and all prerequisites will be satisfied in no time.
In our case we are installing the Hub Transport, Client Access and Mailbox server roles. From the command prompt we start by installing the Active Directory Domain Services remote management tools:
ServerManagerCmd -i RSAT-ADDS
Following a restart, again from the TechNet article, we identify the remaining set of prerequisites. From here we copy the following command sequence to a batch file. Running this we get everything installed at one go.
ServerManagerCmd -i PowerShell
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Server
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-ISAPI-Ext
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Metabase
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Basic-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Digest-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Windows-Auth
ServerManagerCmd -i Web-Dyn-Compression
Installation Failure
We are now ready to start the Exchange 2007 SP1 installation. Keep in mind that SP1 is actually a complete installation that does not require installing Exchange 2007 RTM first. Following the Exchange 2007 installation wizard we proceed with installing the Hub, Client Access and Mailbox server roles. For more details on installing Exchange 2007 check Installing Exchange 2007 Beta 2.
As you can imagine, after all this trouble, the last thing you want is for the installation to fail in the middle. This is what happened to me! The Hub Transport role installation failed reporting:
Service 'MSExchangeTransport' failed to reach status 'Running' on this server.
Looking into the event logs I could also identify the error events 2114, 2501 and 2604.
Log Name: Application
Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Date: 03/05/2008 12:57:59
Event ID: 2114
Task Category: Topology
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: W0832.malta0.local
Description:
Process MSEXCHANGEADTOPOLOGYSERVICE.EXE (PID=3604). Topology discovery failed, error 0x80040a02 (DSC_E_NO_SUITABLE_CDC). Look up the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) error code specified in the event description. To do this, use Microsoft Knowledge Base article 218185, "Microsoft LDAP Error Codes." Use the information in that article to learn more about the cause and resolution to this error. Use the Ping or PathPing command-line tools to test network connectivity to local domain controllers.
Log Name: Application
Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Date: 03/05/2008 12:59:40
Event ID: 2501
Task Category: General
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: W0832.malta0.local
Description:
Process MSEXCHANGEADTOPOLOGY (PID=3604). The site monitor API was unable to verify the site name for this Exchange computer - Call=HrSearch Error code=80040a01. Make sure that Exchange server is correctly registered on the DNS server.
Log Name: Application
Source: MSExchange ADAccess
Date: 03/05/2008 12:58:40
Event ID: 2604
Task Category: General
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: W0832.malta0.local
Description:
Process MSEXCHANGEADTOPOLOGY (PID=3604). When updating security for a remote procedure call (RPC) access for the Exchange Active Directory Topology service, Exchange could not retrieve the security descriptor for Exchange server object W0832 - Error code=80040a01.
The Exchange Active Directory Topology service will continue with limited permissions.
Following some head scratching, the MS Forums again held the answer to my problem.
Disabling IPv6 caused my installation to fail. So I restarted the procedure again, this time making sure to configure a fixed IP under IPv6 as well.
References
How to Install Exchange 2007 SP1 Prerequisites on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista
Forums: Exchange 2007 and windows 2008 Domain Controller in one same server
Installing Exchange 2007 Beta 2