Step-by-step Starting with Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant: Installation

11Oct/1028

Step-by-step Starting with Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant: Installation

This tutorial is part of 4 parts tutorial on Exchange 2010 multi-tenancy support
Part 1: Installation of Exchange 2010 SP1 in hosting mode
Part 2: Creating and deleting Organizations in Exchange 2010 SP1 hosting mode
Part 3: Managing Organization in Exchange 2010 SP1 hosting mode
Part 4: Sending and receiving emails in Exchange 2010 SP1 hosting mode

There have been quite a hype around the new multi tenancy support in Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 that is here to replace HMC (Hosted Messaging and Collaboration) solution. However most of what I have found was related to the new features and what was not supported anymore when Exchange is installed in "hosting mode".

For that reason I have decide to write this step-by-step tutorial that will guide you to installing your first Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant organization to a fully operational mode.

Lab setup

For this lab I am using 2 servers running Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 one of them acting as a domain controller for the lab domain lab.com and the other will be running all roles of Microsoft Exchange 2010 SP1 CAS,HUB and Mailbox.

Of course in a live environment exchange roles will be most probably split among multiple servers but the concept is pretty much the same.

I will assume that the Domain Controller is already installed and that the exchange server to be has already Windows 2008 R2 installed with all the required patches to deploy Exchange 2010 SP1.

Installing Exchange 2010 SP1 in hosting (or multi-tenant) mode

Installing Exchange prerequisites on Windows 2008R2

I am used to this script to automate installation of the prerequisites since I find it very clean.
We will start by running the powershell administrator "right click -> run as administrator" and allow the script execution using

Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted

Running the script will then offer you a menu, in my case I need to select option 6 since all roles will be installed on the same server and restart the machine after.

Installing Exchange

As you may already know Exchange 2010 multi-tenant can only be installed using the command line by adding the /hosting parameter, we will initiate the installation by running

setup.com /m:install /r:m,ca,ht /hosting /on:ExchLab

Let me first explain the above command

/m stands for /mode and we are running the installation mode
/r stands for /roles and we want to install the m (mailbox) ca (client access) ht (hub transport) roles. Of course you will need to change this if you don't want to install all roles
/hosting is required to tell the setup to run the hosting installation
/on stands for /OrganizationName and you will define here the name of your Exchange organization. I called mine ExchLab

We will now wait for the installation to finish

A few differences with Exchange not hosted

The first thing I have noticed after the installation is differences in Active Directory Users and Computers like the presence of a brand new Organizational Unit "Microsoft Exchange Hosted Organizations"

And the addition of new Exchange Security groups (plus the absence of the UM one)

Now of course the absence of the Exchange Management Console should have been first however this I was expecting since it is all over the place so I was expecting this.

Conclusion

Well congratulations you have just installed your Exchange 2010 SP1 in hosting mode. In part 2 of this tutorial I will show you how to create and delete organizations

Enjoyed the post, what is next?

Grab our FULL RSS feed! or Email Updates then share it

About Antoine Khater

I have been working in IT consultancy and solution integration since 1998 and I consider myself lucky to be, one in a few, making a living out of my passion. I am also member of the famous Experts Exchange (profile here) online community where I try my best to share what I have learned along the road.

Tagged as: exchange 2010, exchange multi-tenant, Exchange Server, tutorials Leave a comment

http://www.zerohoursleep.com/2010/10/step-by-step-starting-with-exchange-2010-sp1-multi-tenant-create-and-delete-organizations/ Step-by-step Starting with Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant: Create and delete organizations « Zero Hour Sleep

[...] part 1 of this tutorial I have showed you how to install Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant (or in hosting [...]
http://www.zerohoursleep.com/2010/10/step-by-step-starting-with-exchange-2010-sp1-multi-tenant-manage-your-organizations/ Step-by-step Starting with Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant: Manage your organizations « Zero Hour Sleep

[...] part 1 of this tutorial we have seen how to install exchange 2010 SP1 in hosting mode and in part 2 we [...]
http://www.zerohoursleep.com/2010/10/step-by-step-starting-with-exchange-2010-sp1-multi-tenant-sending-and-receiving-emails/ Step-by-step Starting with Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant: Sending and receiving emails « Zero Hour Sleep

[...] tutorial is part of 4 parts tutorial on Exchange 2010 multi-tenancy support Part 1: Installation of Exchange 2010 SP1 in hosting mode Part 2: Creating and deleting Organizations in Exchange 2010 SP1 hosting mode Part 3: Managing [...]
http://www.zerohoursleep.com/2010/10/disable-enable-organizations-in-exchange-2010-sp1-multi-tenant/ Disable & Enable Organizations in Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant « Zero Hour Sleep

[...] thing I have noticed while working with Exchange 2010 SP1 installed in hosting (or multi-tenant) mode is the lack of the possibility to disable/enable a tenant [...]
Mario Aboujaoude

Nice tony
http://whygoogle.me/ akhater

Thanks man
It

just a quick note.

i have been trying to setup this exchange server for the last 2 weeks.. i have up and down the microsoft website, blogs, technet, other exchange website.. and i just want to THANK YOU for this.
http://whygoogle.me/ akhater

it is much more than a quick not to me

i'm really glad i was able to help and hope you enjoyed the series
mouhamad

quick question..(i hope)

how do i move the databases off the c drive to d

what would i have to do to the owa at that point??
http://whygoogle.me/ akhater

To move the database you will need to use the move-databasepath cmdlet
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124742.aspx

I didn't get the owa part , what about it ?
mouhamad

Antoine.. thanks again for this.

after going thru this process i get this.

[PS] C:Windowssystem32>Get-MailboxDatabase

Name Server Recovery ReplicationType

—- —— ——– —————

Mailbox Database 1274405931 WEB1 False None

[PS] C:Windowssystem32>Dismount-Database -Identity mailbox database 1274405931

A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'database'.

+ CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Dismount-Database], ParameterBindingException

+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Dismount-Database

what am i missing??
http://whygoogle.me/ akhater

probably missing the quotes

Dismount-Database -Identity “mailbox database 1274405931″
Timo Haapavuori

I have tried to find information about AD and hosted Exchange. Is it correct that I need dedicated AD Forest for this and I cant use forrest which already exist? If it's that way I need make trust between domains, correct? Do you have a good guide for this?
Jb

On http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff923281.aspx it says: If Active Directory isn't prepared using the /hosting switch, you will need to clean up active directory and prepare it again for hosting mode. Do you know how to clean up the AD? Simply deleting the OUs and groups you mention above or do we need to remove something using adisedit.msc?
http://whygoogle.me/ akhater

you cannot upgrade / change your AD from non /hosting to /hosting mode. so if you have already installed any version of exchange you will need to install a new forest
http://whygoogle.me/ akhater

no you cannot clean it. if you have any version of exchange installed (or was installed once) or even schema was prepared you will need to have a new forest for this
Jb

Oh gosh! They really make it hard for us to host several customers in Exchange. I wonder if it's even possible to create a trust to our production forest where we have all our thousands of users or all users need to get a seperate account in the other forest…
Timo Haapavuori

Thanks. I have Exchange 2003 installed in my environment. So I supose that I need fresh AD forrest…?
Dragomir Denev

Have a look at this article – http://www.persistentcerebro.com/2010/10/exchange-2010-sp1-hosted-installation.html. Maybe it can help. I haven't tested it yet.
Bt

Really great articles! Thank you very much!!
Alex

Hi Antoine,
After installing my testenvironment, my users are not able to connect Outlook 2010 via rpc. But when i try this with rpc over https it works.
But here it is really necessary to connect directly via rpc..
Do you have any clue, what went wrong?
Dscholl

Has anyone gone back and added more mailbox servers to their hosted environments? Are there any gotchas to watch out for?
Anonymous

Thanks for the link to my script. Just as an FYI, I’m changing my guidance on ExecutionPolicy. It only needs to be set to RemoteSigned for the script to run. Unrestricted will still work, but is a lower security setting that RemoteSigned.
Rajat Kheria

I am using the same command to install Exchange 2010 SP1 in hosting mode as mentioned but running into a weird situation.
It keeps on giving error on the second value after /r:

Any suggestions??

PS D:> setup.com /m:install /r:m,ca,ht /hosting /on:test
isn’t a valid command-line option. To list the available command-line parameters, type Setup /?PS D:> setup.com /m:install /r:m,ht,ca /hosting /on:test

isn’t a valid command-line option. To list the available command-line parameters, type Setup /?PS D:> setup.com /m:install /r:ht,m,ca /hosting /on:test

isn’t a valid command-line option. To list the available command-line parameters, type Setup /?PS D:>
Rajat Kheria

I found the problem. I was running the setup.com command from powershell and not cmd.
http://whygoogle.me/ akhater

Thank you for the update and for the hard work
Aaron

Excellent read!! When I am running the cmd line : e:>setup.com /m:install /r:m,ca,ht /hosting /on:Nightair
I get the message about typing the detail on help. Install will not start!! Any ideas??
Aaron

Nevermind… Got this figured out….
Aaron

HOw do I install/move my exchange store to another data partition within the hosting senerio. I want to keep everything on another partition. My install went beautiful!! Thanks!
Mark

How did you get around this please?
Ganesh Prakasam

Good Article. What is the Pre-requisites for exchange 2010 sp2 hosted installation, i know the default requirments, does it has any other requirments of exchange editions / windows editions..so on.
Evandromalmsteen Malmsteen

Congratulations,

dude you know whether it is possible to move the organizations that are within the Microsoft Exchange Hosted Organizations to another location already created inside it?

« Step-by-step Starting with Exchange 2010 SP1 multi-tenant: Create and delete organizations Autodiscover/Outlook anywhere fails when using a wildcard certificate »