Exchange 2007 Unattended Installation

For the average company that may deploy one or two Exchange Servers, perhaps there is sufficient paranoia that installing such a mission critical application requires personal attention throughout. For a larger company that is deploying several servers, especially where multiple servers host similar roles, there is the option of deploying Exchange 2007 using the unattended installation feature. An unattended installation is just setup with all the paramaters provided up front so the administrator does not need to manually input these values during the installation process.

For Exchange 2007, you can run setup.com (also known as exsetup) from the command line with all of the input parameters needed to complete the installation without further administrator attention. For detailed installations, a properly formatted text file with installation configurations can be called. Setup.com has many possible parameters to configure.

/mode:<setup_mode>

The mode parameter defaults to install if it is not included. The options here are Install, Uninstall, Recover Server and Upgrade. The last option is specific to installing Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 on an existing RTM server.

/roles:<server_roles>

One of the more pleasant changes to Exchange Server setup in 2007 has been the incorporation of ‘roles’ for Exchange. In unattended setup, the roles to be installed on the server must be configured.
Running “setup.com /?” from the command line will return all of the parameters available for an unattended installation. Obviously, for the installation to remain unattended, these answers need to be as complete as possible. The list of parameters is as follows:

Setup.com [/mode:<setup mode>] [/roles:<server roles to install>] [/OrganizationName:<name for the new Exchange organization>] [/TargetDir:<target directory>] [/SourceDir:<source directory>][/UpdatesDir:<directory from which to install updates>] [/DomainControler <FQDN of domain controller>] [/AnswerFile <filename>] [/DoNotStartTransport] [/EnableLegacyOutlook] [/LegacyRoutingServer] [/EnableErrorReporting] [/NoSelfSignedCertificates] [/AdamLdapPort <port>] [/AdamSslPort <port>] [/AddUmLanguagePack:<UM language pack name>] [/RemoveUmLanguagePack:<UM language pack name>] [/NewProvisionedServer] [/RemoveProvisionedServer] [/ForeignForestFQDN] [/ServerAdmin <user or group>] [/NewCms] [/RemoveCms] [/RecoverCms] [/CmsName:<name>] [/CmsIPAddress:<IP address>] [/CmsIPv4Addresses] [/CmsIPv4Networks] [/CmsIPv6Networks] [/CmsSharedStorage] [/CmsDataPath:<CMS data path>] [/UpgradeCms][/?]

The unattended installation answer file simply contains the list of parameters for a single server installation. Cluster installations should use the command line without an answer file. As seen in the above list, one of the parameters is /AnswerFile. This is used as follows:

>Setup.com /Mode:Install /Roles:Mailbox /AnswerFile:C:\Resources\AnswerFile_e2k7.txt The parameters suited for the answer file are EnableLegacyOutlook, LegacyRoutingServer, ServerAdmin, ForeignForestFQDN, OrganizationName, DoNotStartTransport, UpdatesDir, EnableErrorReporting, NoSelfSignedCertificates, AdamLdapPort, and AdamSslPort.

Basic Example

Running Setup.com /mode:install /roles:Hub Transport, Mailbox provides the following output:

>Welcome to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unattended Setup Preparing Exchange Setup     

>Copying Setup Files              ......................... COMPLETED

>The following server roles will be installed
    Management Tools
    Mailbox Role 

>Performing Microsoft Exchange Server Prerequisite Check     
  Mailbox Role Checks              ......................... COMPLETED

>Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server     
  Copying Exchange files           ......................... COMPLETED
  Mailbox Server Role              ......................... COMPLETED
>The Microsoft Exchange Server setup operation completed successfully.

Abbreviations

Exchange 2007 uses some logical abbreviations for the command line parameters. The individual roles can be shortened to a corresponding one or two letter format.

Hub Transport - HT or H
Mailbox - MB or M
Client Access - CA or C
Edge Transport - ET or E
Management Tools - MT or T
Unified Messaging - UM or U

The command line parameters also have abbreviations.
/mode becomes /m
/roles becomes /r

Putting the abbreviations together and:

>setup.com /roles:Hub Transport,Mailbox becomes >setup /r:H,M

Unattended installations are great for deploying Exchange in a remote office where there is no technical staff in place or configuring multiple servers with the same or similar configurations. Of course, this process requires that the administrator is meticulous in providing accurate parameters using setup.com and if applicable, in creating an answer file lest the unattended installation becomes an unintended installation.

William is the Technical Director of Mojave Media Group, LLC in Las Vegas, NV