Installing Exchange 2013 : Creating the Exchange 2013 organization

The Setup command to create a new Exchange organization called contoso is:

Setup /OrganizationName:contoso /IacceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms

Note the IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms parameter. This must be input to indicate that you accept the terms of the Microsoft license to run Exchange. Previous versions of Exchange output some legal text that you had to read and then input a key if you disagreed with the terms. This method was deemed unsatisfactory because the administrator did not explicitly agree with the terms of the license, hence the new parameter, which administrators soon become masters at typing.

A number of Active Directory user accounts are created to support the operation of different Exchange 2013 components. Figure 1 highlights the accounts Setup creates. Users are unaware of these objects because they are used for background or housekeeping purposes, but Exchange 2013 swiftly runs into difficulties if they are not available.

Figure 1. Active Directory accounts Exchange 2013 creates

In Figure 2, Setup checks to see whether any earlier servers are present and warns that no further Exchange 2010 servers can be installed after Setup completes.

Figure 2. Running command-line Setup to prepare Active Directory