This chapter is dedicated to describing and walking you through the installation process of Exchange 2013. Like any other program, ensuring the health and successful operation starts with a solid foundation. As explained in Chapter 1, Planning an Exchange Server 2013 Infrastructure, planning your deployment is crucial. Correctly executing the installation steps is at least equally important. Failure to fulfill the prerequisites or correctly install Exchange 2013 might lead to a lot of problems further down the road.

The recipes that are described in this chapter will lead you through the different steps required to introduce Exchange 2013 in your environment. This can be an upgrade from an existing Exchange organization or an installation in an entirely new environment where no Exchange has been installed before. We'll start by preparing your Active Directory inventory and end with showing how you could modify or remove an Exchange server from your environment.