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Exhange 2003 on VMWare

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by amcmillon 1 view

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I need to know about some of the gotchas related to installing Exchange 2003 on a VMWare ESX virtual machine. The installation seems to only be allowing the administrative tools to be installed, as if it is viewing the server as not having the required OS to install Exchange 2003 server.

8 replies

by bens

Normally you would use a VM that you configured through ESX. Load Server 03 on that VM, then install exchange on the Server 03 OS. I'm pretty sure Exchange still needs a host OS to function on as (at least I dont think) it can be loaded directly on the hypervisor...

by amcmillon

We are attempting to install Exchange on a Windows 2003 virtual server running ESX version 3.5. I have been told that there is an additional product that must be installed along with VMWare in order to install Exchange 2003 on a virtual Windows 2003 server; and I believe that the product is called HV, which may be Hypervisor.

by nimmo

I have installed many virtual 2003 servers with Exchange and have never needed nor heard of needing to install additional software.

by bens

VMware's ESX IS the HyperVisor. That just means ESX communicates directly to the hardware and provisions it as you specify when you create your virtual machines. If you've got ESX installed, then you created a Server 03 virtual machine, any trouble you are having with Exchange install I don't believe is coming from ESX/Virtualization.

by amcmillon

You are correct. I believe that what I was being told was that Microsoft only supports VMWare ESX 3.5 with Windows 2008. Microsoft's virtual solution is called HyperV, I believe. I have had some success with installing Exchange 2003 on a virtual Windows 2003 server. What I had to do was to run ForestPrep and DomainPrep from a virtualized Windows 2003 domain controller prior to installing Exchange 2003 on the vitrual Windows 2003 member server in the test domain. Since our production domain controllers are Windows 2000 servers with AD at the Windows 2000 native functional level and are not virtual servers, and we already have Exchange 2003 for our messaging solution, I need to find some way of installing Exchange 2003 on a virtual Windows 2003 member server of the production domain without receiving the error that the setup in unable to access the AD schema, which by the way should be unnecessary, since the domain had already been prepared for Exchange 2003 when we installed the first Exchange 2003 server.

Any suggestions?

by amcmillon

After looking at the status of the schema master using the Active Dirctory Schema snap-in, I discovered that I needed to seize the shema master role and assign it to our of our domain controllers. The problem wasn't a VMWare issue after all.

by bens

Thanks for posting back. I think you'll find that virtualization will rarely be the cause of any OS related issues. Glad to hear you've got it working!

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