If you decide to install Exchange Server 2010 using GUI all Schema, AD and Domain changes will be done automatically, however in a large environment where we have different administrative roles for each component we may need to prepare the schema and domain using different accounts. You will also want to control the replication process. In this kind of scenario the command-line becomes a requirement.

You will notice that we are not installing Exchange Server 2010 in a current environment with legacy exchange servers (Exchange Server 2000/2003). Because of this, we are going to prepare your lab for a pure Exchange Server 2010 environment. These are the steps to prepare our Schema, AD, and domain using command-line:

1. Open Command Prompt and go to the root directory of Exchange Server 2010 installation files.

2. To prepare the Schema, we must have SchemaAdmins permissions, and run the following command: Setup /PrepareSchema, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

3. Time to create the Exchange Organization, we can accomplish that running the following command: Setup /PrepareAD /OrganizationName:<Your-Organization-Name>, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

4. The last step is to prepare the domain. The general rule to follow is to prepare the domain when we will have an Exchange Server or mailbox enabled users in the designated domain. The following command can be used to prepare the current domain: Setup /PrepareDomain, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Now that we created the Exchange Organization we can install a server using command line, using the following syntax:

Setup /Mode:Install /Roles:<Possible values are: Mailbox, HubTransport, ClientAccess, UnifiedMessaging, EdgeTransport, and/or ManagementTools>