Exchange: How to Prepare Your Domain for Exchange

Exchange uses Active Directory to store information about mailboxes and Exchange server configurations in your organization. Before installing Exchange Server, you must prepare your Active Directory forest and domains for the new version of Exchange

This step is similar to what we did in the previous post; the requirements are the same.

Open Command Prompt as administrator.

Run the following command:

setup.exe /PrepareAD /OrganizationNam:"" /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataOn

Note: The organization name is the name we will give to our Exchange organization; this name cannot be changed.

setup.exe /PrepareAD /OrganizationName:"<Organization Name>" /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataOn

We verify that it has completed successfully.

If we have several Domain Controllers in our domain, it is recommended to synchronize them to replicate the changes made. To do this, we run the following command and verify that the DCs have synchronized without errors.

repadmin /syncall /APed

Another tool we can use to view the synchronization is the following.

repadmin /replsum

Once these steps are completed, we must verify that all the previous processes were performed correctly. There are 3 values ​​we must check:

• rangeUpper
• objectVersion (Default)
• objectVersion (Configuration)

Below is a list of Exchange Server Active Directory versions and a link to the information on the Microsoft page.

Exchange SE Active Directory Versions

Exchange 2019 Active Directory Versions

Exchange 2016 Active Directory Versions

Now, let’s access a domain controller and review the values ​​described above. We will use the following tool: ADSI Edit.

Right-click and select “Connect to…”

To review the rangeUpper values, select the Schema Naming Context and click OK.

Locate the object CN=ms-Exch-Schema-Version-Pt and find the rangeUpper attribute.

To review the ObjectVersion (Configuration) values, right-click again.

Open ADSI Edit and select “Connect To…”

In the Naming Context, select Configuration and click OK.

Find the ObjectVersion attribute within CN=,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=

Finally, return to ADSI Edit and connect to the Default naming context.

Find the ObjectVersion attribute within CN-Microsoft Exchange System Objects, DC=

Once you have verified all the values ​​and confirmed they match the table shown earlier, proceed with installing the requirements for Exchange.