Reinstalling Windows Server 2008 DC with Exchange Server 2007 On It

[PMachado]

Hello, I'm facing a dilemma here that I am attempting to rectify. I am going to post as much detail as I can but ultimately my questions will be: how do I reformat my drive and reinstall Windows Server 2008 on one server and Exchange 2007 on another.

Current scenario is a Windows Server 2008 Enterprise server acting as domain controller. It is the only server in my organization. I also have Exchange 2007 running on the same server (I know, it's a no no). I'm at the point where I need to upgrade the server hardware and want to take the opportunity to reformat and resetup the server. However I'm also taking this opportunity to isolate Exchange 2007 to its own server. So, to summarize, I have one server and want to end up with two, one with Server 2008 acting as DC and the other with Server 2008 and Exchange 2007 acting as member server. Can anyone provide me with a step by step on how to do this without losing my mailboxes. That is really my only concern. I have no problem formatting the server and getting Server 2008 back up and running porperly but I do not want to lose all the e-mails and calendar items in the 5 different mailboxes currently on the server. Any help with this would be immensely appreciated. If anyone requires any clarification please let me know. Thank you very much in advance for your help.

 

[58sniper]

This could be a fair amount of work. You can't promote or demote a server that's running Exchange. So you'd have to have a third server to do what you want - even if it's virtual. What I would probably do is stand up the second server as a Hyper-V server, create two guests - 1 for a DC and 1 for Exchange. Migrate according to best practices. Flatten the first and rebuild as a DC. Now you have a 2 DC 1 Exchange server environment.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/