Wednesday 8 August 2012

Prepare Exchange 2007 Active Directory


Prepare Exchange 2007 Active Directory

Do you want to know how you can prepare your Exchange 2007 Active Directory by using comman line switches such as PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions or PrepareAD? Watch our video.
When transitioning to Exchange 2007, the simplest way to make the required changes to Active Directory is to proceed with installing Exchange 2007 into your environment.  Checks will be automatically performed to ensure that Exchange 2007 Active Directory is up to date, invoking the necessary options as needed.  You will need to learn more about the various switches however, should there be a need to perform the changes in stages.
The /PrepareLegacyExchangePermissions for example, is used to ensure the recipient update service and administrative permissions are functioning properly.  Moving on, /PrepareSchema will make the changes to the Active Directory schema – assuming the proper permissions to be able to update the schema. The next switch is: /PrepareAD, which makes several helpful changes such as creating universal security groups in both the root and existing Domain.  It will also create an administrative group named Exchange Administrative group and a routing group called Exchange Routing group.  These groups won’t be visible through the Exchange Management Console and Exchange 2007 though, and can only be seen in the System Manager in Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003.  Note that executing the /PrepareAD switch before the two other switches mentioned above will run them automatically.
Finally, the /PrepareDomain or /PrepareAllDomain switches will configure the appropriate permissions on a container called Domain for your Exchange servers, organization administrators, authenticated users and mailbox administrators.  It also creates the system objects container, establishes proper permissions, configures a new domain global group and adds that group into the universal security group.
Obviously, the quickest way to prepare your Exchange 2007 Active Directory would be to run the /PrepareAD switch as a start, followed by the /PrepareAllDomains Switch.  The easiest way to determine whether everything worked would be to check the administrative and routing groups created within the Exchange System Manager.  Its existence will be a clear sign that everything worked, and that your environment is ready for the installation of Exchange 2007 Server.

No comments: