Exchange and Visual C++ prerequisites

Question

Hello,

Looking at exchange 2016 prerequisites
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/plan-and-deploy/prerequisites?view=exchserver-2016
only visual c++ 2012 and 2013 are supported but I can see many exchange servers have a lots of visual c++ versions.
e.g. I found this exchange 2013 server have many visual c++ versions

And I found opinion about visual c++
https://superuser.com/questions/173403/why-are-there-so-many-different-visual-c-redistributables/619114#619114

But what about Exchange?
e.g. I have windows 2016 server and this server already have visual c ++ 2015-2019 installed and now I need to install Exchange 2016 on this server.

Is it OK to install visual c++ 2012 and 2013 on this server which is prerequisites and leave visual c++ 2015-2019?
Any advice?

Answer 1

@Andy

Do you install other tools which needed a high version of visual c++ on your Exchange server? If you only install Exchange server, there will not exist other version of visual c++:

The install of Exchange need visual c++ 2012/2013 exist, it doesn't mean that there cannot exist version of visual c++. Here are Exchange Server supportability matrix, visual c++ isn't listed in it.

Personally, I don't suggest you install other tools on Exchange server.

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Answer 2

The correct version of the VC runtimes are essential for many things in Exchange, notably installations and CU upgrades where if you have the wrong version, can cause the install and CU updates to fail in some very interesting ways. The best way I've found to insure the correct VC runtimes are installed is to run the Microsoft maintained HealthChecker PowerShell script.

This is the Prerequisites info page for Exchange 2019