Exchange 2010 has been in the market for well over two years now and lots of blogs have been written for both design and deployment but still when I visit many customers, they ask me guidance on how to upgrade to Exchange 2010 from an older version of Exchange. I thought to share a sort of high level deployment/upgrade steps that you need to take to upgrade from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010. We are assuming here that customer has only one Internet facing site, later I will add additional steps when you have multiple Internet and non-Internet facing sites.

  • All Exchange 2010 servers should be joined to domain and updated.
  • First to deploy the E2010 CAS and HUB server in Internet facing site. Most customers are deploying combination of Hub transport and CAS roles.
    • To install the CAS and Hub transport prerequisites, run PowerShell as administrator
      • Import-Module ServerManager
      • Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Client-Auth,Web-Dir-Browsing,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Http-Redirect,Web-Http-Tracing,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Request-Monitor,Web-Static-Content,Web-WMI,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy –Restart
      • Set-Service NetTcpPortSharing -StartupType Automatic
  • Run Setup /PrepareSchema
  • Run Setup /preparead
  • Install Exchange 2010 CAS and Hub + SP2 in Internet facing site
  • Create CAS Array as below
    • new-clientaccessarray-FQDN outlook.Contoso.com -Site "Internet facing site" -Name "outlook.Contoso.com"
    • Add the record in DNS for outlook.Contoso.com in internal DNS
  • Test Outlook web access URL from internal computers
  • Necessary firewall and Reverse publishing configuration to be done to support the below URLs
  • Deploy the E2010 Mailbox server in Internet facing site
    • To install the prerequisites for mailbox role, run PowerShell as administrator
      • Import-Module ServerManager
      • Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server –Restart
  • Install Exchange 2010 Mailbox server + SP2
  • Create a new DAG and assign an IP address to DAG
  • Add all mailbox servers to Internet facing site DAG
  • Add required mailbox databases and copies in the DAG.
  • Test mailbox creation in Exchange 2010
  • Test mail flow.
  • Migrate test mailboxes from E2K7 to E2010
  • Transition the CAS URL so that mail.Contoso.com will point to Exchange 2010 and webmail.Contoso.com will point to Exchange 2007 CAS servers as per steps defined in http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2009/11/20/3408856.aspx
  • Migrate the Pilot mailboxes from E2K7 to E2010
  • Test mailbox creation in Exchange 2010
  • Enable Outlook Anywhere on all CAS servers and remove the OA endpoint from old Exchange servers
  • Move OAB to Exchange 2010 server in Internet facing site
  • Migrate any remaining mailboxes to Exchange 2010 servers
  • Migrate any connectors and public folders to Exchange 2010 servers
  • Decommission old Exchange 2007 servers

Read my favorites blogs:

Designing a backup less Exchange 2010 Architecture

Step by step guide for upgrading Active Directory from Microsoft Windows 2003 to Microsoft Windows Server 2008

Microsoft Exchange 2010 CAS Array – Steps and Recommendations

Appear Offline in Microsoft Office Communicator Server 2007

Microsoft Exchange 2010 Test cases

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Disaster Recovery