What process is going to be involved in upgrading from Exchange 2007 Beta 2 to RTM? I'm currently running all roles on one server; i.e. Hub Transport, Mailbox, and Client Access. Can I perform an in-place upgrade? Or, is it going to be necessary to uninstall Exchange 2007 Beta 2 (please say this isn't the case)? Do mailboxes have to be exported? Can settings be exported and then imported? Can I just possibly uninstall Hub Transport and Client Access and then re-install those roles with RTM and perform an in-place upgrade of the mailboxes? Any details are greatly appreciated! Thank you.

You can upgrade anE2K7 beta 2 server to RTM by usingSetup /Mode:Upgrade. Only role which must be removed and added again is the CAS role. Also note that you must recreate any existingreceive connectors after the upgrade (because of a change in the ExchangeUsers and Exchange Servers Permission groups). Before you start upgrading the server you should be sure to first upgrade the domain and schema. You also need toremove Monadand instead installWindows PowerShell.

Be careful not to remove Monad before uninstalling the CA role. Otherwise you'll be re-installing Monad and mucking with regedit. Once you do uninstall the CA role, then uninstall Monad, install PowerShell and run the "setup /m:upgrade" and you'll be good to go.

So am I going to have to redo permissions at all?Is the process basically going to be:1. Uninstall CA role2. Uninstall Monad3. Upgrade schema4. Install Microsoft Power Shell5. Upgrade Exchange 20076. Recreate receive connectors7. DoneThat seems way to easy, and as I have learned with these procedures... if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.I'm assuming that I'm probably going to lose more settings, correct?

Please help!

Aaron, Yes those are pretty much the steps. I forgot to mention this but please bear in mind that upgrading from beta2 to RTM is unsupported when speaking production environments unless you're participating in the Exchange 2007 RDP or TAP, but you already knew this right :)

Do you think that there will probably be poor side effects from doing this or is it likely to function once up the same as normal RTM Exchange 2007 box? Also, I'm still curious as to what kinds of settings I'll have to re-incorporate? Am I going to have to re-issue the SSL certificates, etc...

Hi, This is not a scientific response, but as a general rule I would not upgrade a beta piece of software to RTM unless it was only for test. Also as Henrik said you won't be supported so doing this on a production system would not be a sensible idea. Whether there will be issues or not is hard to say. MS have obviously provided the route to upgrade and thus must have done at least some testing. I would guess that it would work OK but you simply don't know. That is why a clean install makes more sense. Cheers Nathan

How will I go about "upgrading the domain and schema"?

I'm going to answer my own question here: setup /mode:prepareschema setup /mode:preparead Please correct me if I'm wrong...

Has anyone actually seen this upgrade completed successfully? This won't be done in a production environment, just a test server that I use for my own personal email account.

I'm going to answer my own question here: setup /mode:prepareschema setup /mode:preparead Please correct me if I'm wrong... Yes, that is right. Personally I haven't seen the upgrade but if it has been enabled, then I would assume that it has been tested to some degree and for a personal mail account I would have thought it would be fine. After all, if the worst came to the worst you could rebuild it in a few hours with the RTM code. Cheers Nathan

Actually you only need to run Setup /PrepareAD as this will run PrepareSchema as well. Also see: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/e2k7help/f895e1ce-d766-4352-ac46-ec959c9954a9.mspx

Yes I've completed an upgrade from beta2 to RTM successfully in a production environemt (via the Exchange 2007 RDP) and in several test environments.

When you say that I could rebuild in a few hours with the RTM build. Do you mean that I could just uninstall everything but the mailbox role and then reinstall all other roles?

Hi, No, sorry for the confusion. I simply meant that if you only have limited data, then you could literally rebuild the server and re-install the RTM of Exchange relatively quickly if you experienced problems after the upgrade. Cheers Nathan

Thanks everyone... I'll post back with my results.

1. Uninstall CA role (also go into IIS and delete Exchweb from the Default Site)2. Uninstall Monad3. Install Microsoft Power Shell4. Upgrade schema (setup.exe /preparead)5. Run setup.exe /mode:upgrade6. Install updates that setup says you are missing and then reboot if necessary(if the last step went perfectly then ignore this step)7. Run setup.exe /mode:upgrade again if necessary9. Install the CA role10. DoneNow someone had said before that you also need to recreate the receive connectors, but I never did this. Can somebody clarify if this is necessary, and if so, why?

Aaron Marks wrote:Now someone had said before that you also need to recreate the receive connectors, but I never did this. Can somebody clarify if this is necessary, and if so, why? Due to a change in the ExchangeUsers and Exchange Servers permission groups, you need to remove and re-create the existing receive connectors.

Aaron Marks wrote:1. Uninstall CA role (also go into IIS and delete Exchweb from the Default Site)2. Uninstall Monad3. Install Microsoft Power Shell4. Upgrade schema (setup.exe /preparead)5. Run setup.exe /mode:upgrade6. Install updates that setup says you are missing and then reboot if necessary(if the last step went perfectly then ignore this step)7. Run setup.exe /mode:upgrade again if necessary9. Install the CA role10. DoneNow someone had said before that you also need to recreate the receive connectors, but I never did this. Can somebody clarify if this is necessary, and if so, why? I tried this earlier this week and it worked perfectly... Thanks!

I have been running on my upgraded version of Exchange 2007 for a month now and I had to come back and recommend to anyone who is thinking about doing this to strongly reconsider. The biggest problem with running a setup.exe /mode:upgrade is that you are leaving the Mailbox role as a beta 2 version. The exchange search function is unfortunately part of the mailbox role and as a result it doesn't ever get upgrade to the RTM version. There is no way around this from what I have heard from the MS Tech support folks.I'm currently in the process of setting up another DC to migrate my AD to. Then I'm going to have to build a brand new Win2k3 x64 + E2k7 server build from the ground up on some new HDs.If you are considering doing this for even a semi-production environment (a.k.a. even hosting some of IT's mailboxes on).Cheers!