I love being on the bleeding-edge of technology.  In our “wired” world, technology is critical in empowering our staff to more effectively carry out the mission of the church.  We were a relatively early adopter of Exchange 2007 - migrating from Lotus Notes last summer.  Now, we are actively exploring the cool features Windows Server 2008 has to offer as well as beginning to roll it out in our production environment.

Things have gone relatively smooth so far, with a WSUS server, three terminal servers, and a few other miscellaneous apps successfully running on Server 2008.  I’ve recently been looking into migrating our exchange environment to Server 2008.  Since they are both Microsoft Products, it should be easy, right?  NOT!  I wonder sometimes if MS makes it hard for us on purpose.  Here are a few of the stipulations for running Exchange 2007 on Server 2008 (from the Exchange Team Blog:

• RTM version of Exchange 2007 will not install run on Server 2008 (I can understand this, since Exchange 2007 was released way before Server 2008)
• Exchange 2007 SP1 runs on Server 2008 (sounds good so far)
• Upgrading to Exchange 2007 SP1 on Server 2003, then upgrading to Server 2008 is a No-Go
• Upgrading from Server 2003 to Server 2008, then installing Exchange 2007 SP1 = absolutely not
• Clean install of Server 2008 + clean install of Exchange 2007 SP1 is gold.

So, basically, the only way to get exchange onto Server 2008 is to do a clean install of Server 2008 on bare metal, then install Exchange 2007 SP1.  At that point, you must configure all appropriate Exchange roles on the new server, migrate all the mailboxes, and then decommission the old server.  Doesn’t sound like much fun.  And, to think, I have 3 Exchange servers.

Obviously, I’ll survive and it will all get done, but it’s a bit frustrating that a company like Microsoft can’t plan for better integration/interoperability among their own products!