Planning for Exchange 2010

 

Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2

These topics can help you plan the deployment of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 into your production environment. Use the following links to access the information to help you make your planning decisions.

After you have completed the planning phase and are ready to deploy, see Deploying Exchange 2010. Also, see Establish a Test Environment later in this topic about installing Exchange 2010 in a test environment prior to deploying into production.

• Exchange 2010 System Requirements
  Before you install Exchange 2010, make sure that your organization meets the system requirements.

• Planning Roadmap for New Deployments
  Read this topic to get an overview of the things you need to consider before you begin a new Exchange 2010 deployment.

• Exchange 2003 - Planning Roadmap for Upgrade and Coexistence
  This topic provides an overview of the things you need to consider before you deploy Exchange 2010 into an Exchange Server 2003 organization.

• Exchange 2007 - Planning Roadmap for Upgrade and Coexistence
  This topic provides an overview of the things you need to consider before you deploy Exchange 2010 into an Exchange 2007 organization.

• Exchange Server Deployment Assistant
  Use this tool to generate a customized checklist for planning, installing, or upgrading to Exchange 2010.

• Workforce Planning for Exchange
  This topic can help you make informed decisions when determining the appropriate workforce levels for your Exchange Server environment.

• Planning for High Availability and Site Resilience
  Consult this topic to help you with planning to achieve your high availability and site resilience requirements.

• Planning Active Directory
  Learn about Active Directory requirements and its interaction with your Exchange organization.

• Understanding Disjoint Namespace Scenarios
  This topic discusses the supported scenarios for deploying Exchange 2010 in a domain that has a disjoint namespace.

• Mailbox Server Storage Design
  This group of topics discusses storage design, which is a critical piece of a successful Exchange 2010 Mailbox server role deployment.

• Understanding Exchange 2010 Virtualization
  Read this topic to learn more about how you can deploy Exchange 2010 in a virtualized environment.

• Planning for Internal and Third-Party Applications
  This topic links to important information about Application Programming Interfaces that are available for applications that use Exchange 2010.

• Exchange 2010 Deployment Permissions Reference
  Consult this topic to learn about the permissions that are required to set up an Exchange 2010 organization.

• Exchange Network Port Reference
  Use this topic to find information about ports, authentication, and encryption for all data paths used by Exchange 2010.

• Exchange Server Supportability Matrix
  Consult this topic to learn about the level of support available for any configuration or required component for all versions of Microsoft Exchange.

• Exchange 2010 Solution Accelerator
  This topic links to a guide related to infrastructure planning and design for Service Pack 1 for Exchange 2010. The guide provides a step-by-step process for successfully designing an Exchange 2010 infrastructure.

Note

You can't upgrade an existing Exchange 2000 organization directly to Exchange 2010. You must first upgrade the Exchange 2000 organization to either an Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 organization, and then you can upgrade the Exchange 2003 or Exchange 2007 organization to Exchange 2010. We recommend that you upgrade your organization from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003, and then upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010. For more information about upgrading from Exchange 2000, see Planning an Upgrade from Exchange 2000 and Upgrading to Exchange 2007.

Establish a Test Environment

Before installing Exchange 2010 for the first time, we recommend that you install it in an isolated test environment. This approach reduces the risk of end-user downtime and negative ramifications to the production environment.

The test environment will act as your “proof of concept” for your new Exchange 2010 design and make it possible to move forward or roll back any implementations before deploying into your production environments. Having an exclusive test environment for validation and testing allows you to do pre-installation checks for your future production environments. By installing in a test environment first, we believe that your organization will have a better likelihood of success in a full production implementation.

For many organizations, the costs of building a test lab may be high because of the need to duplicate the production environment. To reduce the hardware costs associated with a prototype lab, we recommend the use of virtualization by using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V technologies. Hyper-V enables server virtualization, allowing multiple virtual operating systems to run on a single physical machine.

For more detailed information about Hyper-V, see Virtualization with Hyper-V. For information about Microsoft support of Exchange 2010 in production on hardware virtualization software, see "Hardware Virtualization" in Exchange 2010 System Requirements.

 © 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.