Upgrading Exchange 2007 to Service Pack 2
This past weekend I wanted to get our Exchange environment up to date and I decided to install SP2 as well as Rollup 1 on our three Exchange 2007 servers. This article will give you some hints to help you along the migration path that you may want to consider.
Install SP2 and Rollup 1 on your Edge Transport or Client Access Server FIRST. This will allow you to continue to proxy requests to your back-end servers since SP2 is backwards compatible with SP1. If you decide to install SP2 on one of your Mailbox servers first, and your OWA proxy is not up to date, then your users will no longer be able to access their mail via webmail - they will get an error about the version level being unsupported on the back end. Amazingly though ActiveSync will continue to function in this scenario.
You do not have to reboot in order to install SP2 or Rollup 1 but do allow for some maintenance for this to occur. In my environment the install took approximately 1 hour to complete per server.
Once you have installed SP2, any changes you made to the OWA access such as SSL requirements are replaced with the defaults. I found this the most frustrating since I took some time to get this all set up the way I wanted. I wish they would leave these settings alone when you install the update. As always, document your configuration with notes and/or screenshots so that you do not get in a bind and have to re-invent the wheel once you install the update.
Overall, the process went fairly smooth and was pretty straight forward. Keep in mind that any upgrade or changes you make to your email environment should be considered critical and that backups before and after the changes are crucial. Testing extensively should be done in order to make sure that the transition will be as seamless as possible.
Install SP2 and Rollup 1 on your Edge Transport or Client Access Server FIRST. This will allow you to continue to proxy requests to your back-end servers since SP2 is backwards compatible with SP1. If you decide to install SP2 on one of your Mailbox servers first, and your OWA proxy is not up to date, then your users will no longer be able to access their mail via webmail - they will get an error about the version level being unsupported on the back end. Amazingly though ActiveSync will continue to function in this scenario.
You do not have to reboot in order to install SP2 or Rollup 1 but do allow for some maintenance for this to occur. In my environment the install took approximately 1 hour to complete per server.
Once you have installed SP2, any changes you made to the OWA access such as SSL requirements are replaced with the defaults. I found this the most frustrating since I took some time to get this all set up the way I wanted. I wish they would leave these settings alone when you install the update. As always, document your configuration with notes and/or screenshots so that you do not get in a bind and have to re-invent the wheel once you install the update.
Overall, the process went fairly smooth and was pretty straight forward. Keep in mind that any upgrade or changes you make to your email environment should be considered critical and that backups before and after the changes are crucial. Testing extensively should be done in order to make sure that the transition will be as seamless as possible.
posted by Rick Mitchell Solutions @ 11:01 AM
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