Been playing around with the office test rig and finally upgraded from Server 2008 R2 to Server 2012 STD.

The test rig is a basic server which has the following roles

Active Directory domain controller

DNS

DHCP

IIS

SMTP

FILE Services

Exchange 2010 with all roles

The test server has a 256GB C: drive, and 3TB of data storage

The test server currently has a measly 2GB of RAM

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After Exchange 2010 SP3 was released in the last couple of weeks, this added compatibility with Server 2012 and Exchange 2013 interoperability. So I decided to update the test rig in the following order.

Install all remaining 2008 R2 patches

Install all remaining Exchange 2010 SP2 updates

Install Exchange 2010 SP3

Mount server 2012 ISO, and run setup with ADPREP option to add in the required AD changes for Server 2012 as test rig server is a fully isolated box running all AD services for the Exchange 2010 server.

Run Server 2012 setup and selected the upgrade option and let it get on with it.

Several hours and 2 restarts later, its almost working. OS is installed, all services running but the exchange management console is broken. A quick google reveals this is down to an issue with the WINRM IIS component, so a couple of poweshell commands and WINRM is reinstalled.

Install all 2012 server updates and activate windows online.

Raise domain and forest function levels to Windows 2012.

Thats it, all working, cant believe how simple it was. Seems to be running fine with 2GB ram, but the test rig only has a few test mailboxes.

Good to know! You had chance to play with revised Hyper V?

We don't use Hyper V, we are fully virtualised using ESXi version 5.1 (80 odd servers across 4 ESXi hosts). The test exchange server is one of our old physical servers, hence the low memory.

I still have the live server to upgrade at some point, but its still running Exchange 2010 SP1 but with all updates. It has more than 300 mailboxes on it, so will take a while longer. Scheduling here is the big issue since we have some users who insist on working 7 days a week.

Vmware to high a premium for our sector so for us its squeeze what you can straight from the box!

I'm still not sure about using the Metro interface on a Server.

Tomorrow I'll be completing the first steps to getting Exchange running on Windows 2012 on the live production email system by upgrading the beast to Exchange 2010 SP3 directly from SP1. The live system has more than 300 mailboxes, and we did a test run on Friday using Veeam and having the Exchange Server, and both Domain Controllers mounted in a isolated VLAN. The upgrade went through with a couple of issues which I have already fixed on the live system, so tomorrow it should go straight through. With all the testing and the install itself, I reckon I'll be connected to the office for 4 hours or so via VPN.

Seems much easier than under sp2.

I had to change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion back to 6.1 just to pass the readiness checks.

Exchange 2013 is almost here.

I have now finished the live system upgrade to Exchange 2010 SP3, went ok till the end.

We run a custom routing transport connector to route secure email, but it was causing the upgraded Transport service to fail. I ended up reinstalling Visual Studio C# Express, so I could recompile it against the new transport DLL's. Even then it would not reinstall, and was complaining that the version of .NET I compiled it against was newer than the one on the server. I now run Windows 8 on my Macbook (VMWare Fusion), so had to dig up an old Windows 7 VM and use that and install VC C# Expres again, but still would not install.So, run in every .NET Framework update I could find onto the live email system, rebooted and hooray it finally reinstalled using the Windows 7 created DLL. All tested and running perfectly, VMWare checkpoint deleted and full VEEAM backup run against the exchange server and DC's.