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Upgrading from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 on Windows 2012 (Part 2)

Dave Rowe Jul 4, 2013 9:38:00 PM

Active Directory

In my previous post on Upgrading from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2013 on Windows 2012 (Part 1), we covered the prerequisites to installing Exchange 2013 in your Exchange 2010 environment. In this article we will cover installing Exchange 2013 and configuring it for coexistence. For simplicity’s sake, I will show screenshots from a single “all-in-one” server installation, since they do not vary much.

Installing Exchange 2013 Server

From the Exchange 2013 CD or ISO, run setup.exe
When the install launches the first thing it will ask is to Check for Updates?
In my environment, there do not appear to be any updates necessary. Click Next.
After Initializing Setup… Click Next on the Introduction window.
Review the License Agreement and click I accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next.
On the Recommended Settings windows choose whether you want to Use recommended settings. Exchange server will automatically check online for solutions… I don’t typically participate in these, but I’ll be a good sport and say Yes here. Click Next.
On the next screen you will notice that Exchange 2013 only offers two roles: Mailbox role and Client Access role. For a better explanation on the roles, click here. For now I am going to check the Mailbox and Client Access role and click Next.
On the Installation Space and Location, click Next.
Once the Readiness Checks have run, click Next and watch Setup Progress.
On the Setup Completed window, click Finish and reboot the server.
After reboot, normally you could access the new Exchange Admin Center through the following link: https://ausxc1301/ecp (See observations below)

When I originally installed Exchange 2013 in my environment I followed the old best practice of deploying a Client Access server first before installing a Mailbox server. The following observations were made when errors occurred.

Observation #1:

ECP did not work. When I login to the new Exchange Admin Center (https://localhost/ecp) with my admin account I am sent directly to the Exchange 2010 Exchange Control Panel (ECP). This is due to the fact that my Admin account mailbox is still on Exchange 2010. There are two ways to fix this problem:

Move your Admin mailbox to Exchange 2013. (This is not possible in my scenario because I only installed the CAS role.)
Add the following to the end of the ECP URL: ?ExchClientVer=15 https://localhost/ecp?ExchClientVer=15

Neither of these options worked for me, which left me wondering why. This is where I ran into my first experience with the Client Access Server being only a proxy to the Mailbox server role. When I attempt to access the EAC it does not really exist yet, because the CAS is attempting to proxy the connection to the mailbox role, which does not exist in my environment yet. All of the processing occurs on the Exchange 2013 Mailbox role.

Observation #2:

The installation put an Exchange Toolbox and Exchange Management Shell icon on the Windows 2012 Start Menu. Neither of these work, for the same reason outlined in Observation #1.

My suspicion was confirmed when I tried to launch Exchange Management Shell and received this error.

VERBOSE: Connecting to AUSXC1301.SERVUSINC.COM. New-PSSession : [ausxc1301.servusinc.com] Connecting to remote server ausxc1301.servusinc.com failed with the following error message : Cannot find Mailbox server with Version 15.0 (Build 515.32). For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic. At line:1 char:1 + New-PSSession -ConnectionURI “$connectionUri” -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Excha … + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.Manageme….RemoteRunspace:RemoteRunspace) [New-PSSession], PSRemotingTransportException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : -2144108477,PSSessionOpenFailed

Stay tuned for my next blog on post installation tasks.