Journey to Active Directory - Exchange reinstall:

today's topic is about upgrading AD and Exchange to Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 from 2003 SP2. since my test exchange server crashed due to "running out of HDD space", i am taking two approach to deal with this in parallel - 1) resizing the c:\ crashed exchange server (2003 sp2, we shall call it exchange1), and 2) building a new exchange server with sufficient c:\ (LOL).

while doing 2), i chose to deploy Server 2003 R2, and this presented a problem: the installation program doesn't work and gave a funny error about DNS incompatibility. after some troubleshooting, it was evident that the DC (schema master) needed to be upgraded to R2 first. with this requirement comes the requirement to upgrade all DCs to R2.

the following steps must be completed before these Domain Controllers can be upgraded to R2:

1. D:\CMPNENTS\R2\ADPREP\ADPREP.EXE /forestprep
2. SETUP2.EXE /quiet /accepteula /productkey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX /suppressreboot

after bringing the whole domain to R2 and fixing the DNS architecture (removing dead DNS servers and records), exchange 2003 could finally be reinstalled.

- Kenny