As many of you probably know, the Exchange team released Service Pack 2 for Exchange 2007 last week (perhaps this was a little overshadowed by the release of Exchange 2010 RC1).
Service pack 2 contains a number of of fixes and some really useful new features (the following is take from the Microsoft TechNet site).

• Enhanced Auditing - New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository. This simplifies the auditing process and makes review of audited events easier by segregating audited events in a dedicated location.
• Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality - A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool. Exchange Server 2007 didn't have this capability on Windows Server 2008 and additional solutions were required to perform this task.
• Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation - The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don't exist in the AD schema.
• Public Folder Quota Management - SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
• Centralized Organizational Settings - SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
• Named Properties cmdlets - SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
• New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging- SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.

Pre-Requisites

Before you install Service Pack 2 you will need to ensure that your Target Exchange Servers have Windows Installer Version 4.5 deployed to them you can get Windows Installer 4.5 from the following link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942288 – from here you will need to download the version which is most appropriate for the version of Windows (Windows 2003, Windows 2008, x32, x64, IA64) which Exchange is installed upon – you will also need to reboot your server after the installation for the new Installer framework to take effect.

If you are running Windows 2008 with Service Pack 2 you do not need to apply this update as it is already present within the Service Pack.

Additionally I have found (and indeed seen from some of the forums posts which are around at the moment) that it pays to stop the following services BEFORE you install SP2:

1. Backup EVERYTHING – AD and Exchange – this might seem elementary but I have had to support people in the past whom have just performed Service Packs without backing anything up.
2. SNMP
3. Remote Registry – you should RESTART this service prior to the upgrade.
4. Microsoft Operations Manager
5. Any other real time monitoring product which makes use of Agents
6. Anti Virus (although you should make sure that you re-enable these immediately after the installation)

You should also ensure that any previous installations or Windows update sessions have completed prior to beginning the Service Pack – and pending reboots will cause the update to fail.

Installation Order

There are many ways to install updates and service packs for Exchange, and many people will have the preferred method depending on the configuration of their environment.

However the following is the sequence that I have used which has served me well (this service pack is also slight different as it has an additional step at the beginning which adds support for the Dynamic AD Schema Updated Validation).

1. Update the Schema to support DASUV – this only needs to be performed once per-forest
2. Prepare the directory to support RBAC – this only needs to be performed once per-domain
3. Upgrade your Client Access Servers
4. Upgrade your Hub Transport Servers
5. Upgrade your Edge Servers
6. Upgrade your Mailbox Servers / CMS

Schema Updates and AD Preparation

As per the MS Exchange Team’s blog post here Exchange 2007 SP 2 performs some schema updates. Now you have the choice of letting the GUI perform these changes (if you upgrade your Client Access and HT server first) – but if you have more than one domain controller I recommend that you perform these updates PRIOR to upgrading any of the Exchange binaries.
This allows for you to allow for a directory replication to take place.

From the MSExchange Team’s Blog you need to perform the following steps (reproduced from the Blog post):

How do I extend the schema?

In order to extend the schema you must meet all the pre-requisites:

1. You must be running the Exchange 2007 setup with a domain account that is a member of the Schema Admins and Enterprise Admins security groups.
2. The machine on which you run the Exchange 2007 setup schema extension process must be a member of the same domain and Active Directory site as the Schema Master.
3. The machine on which you run the Exchange 2007 setup schema extension process must be:

a. Windows Server 2003 SP2 with Windows Installer 4.5 installed
b. Windows Server 2008 with Windows Installer 4.5 installed
c. Windows Server 2008 SP2

To extend the schema, you simply run this command from an administrative command line:

setup /PrepareSchema

How do I prepare Active Directory?

In order to prepare Active Directory you must meet all the pre-requisites:

1. You must be running the Exchange 2007 setup with a domain account that is a member of the Enterprise Admins security group.
2. The machine on which you run the Exchange 2007 setup schema extension process must be a member of the same domain and Active Directory site as the Schema Master.
3. The machine on which you run the Exchange 2007 setup schema extension process must be:

a. Windows Server 2003 SP2 with Windows Installer 4.5 installed
b. Windows Server 2008 with Windows Installer 4.5 installed
c. Windows Server 2008 SP2

To extend the schema, you simply run this command from an administrative command line:

setup /PrepareAD

Client Access and Hub Transport Servers

You can choose to upgrade these servers either via the GUI or the command line – for the purposes of this article I have used the GUI:

Ensure that you have followed all of the steps which are listed above in the Pre-Requisites section, go to the location where you have placed the installation binaries and double click on the “Setup.exe” application.
Upon doing so you will be presented with the following welcome screen:

Click on the “Install Microsoft Exchange Service Pack 2” link from the above screen.

On the Introduction Screen (above) click on the “Next” button, which will take you to the licensing screen.

Accept the terms of the license and then click on the “Next” button.

Exchange Setup will then evaluate your organisation and servers to ensure that he upgrade process will be a smooth as possible, when all of the tests have been passed (you must correct and errors, and it is strongly advisable to fix any warnings to) – click on the “Next” button.

If you have not already upgraded the schema from the command line Exchange Setup will do this for you, once completed setup will then continue to upgrade the relevant roles (Client Access / HT / Basic Mailbox) on the server.
One point on the Schema and Domain upgrades – I have found that it pays to do these from the command line and then allow for a domain replication to take place (if you have more than one domain controller) – this can prevent problems later on.

When setup has completed successfully click on the “Finish” button – you might be asked to reboot, however I have found that it pays to restart the server post upgrade even if you have not been asked to.

Clustered Mailbox Servers (which applied to both CCR and SCC Clusters)

Clustered Mailbox Servers are upgraded from the command line – it is important to remember that cluster upgrades can be a little fiddly so it is important to follow the pre-requisites , but the generally accepted process for upgrading them is as such:

1. Passive Node Binaries
2. Clustered Mailbox Server Instance
3. Move Clustered Server Instance to the upgraded Passive Node
4. Upgrade final node(s)

Logon to the passive node (this node MUST NOT have any clustered resources running on it) within your cluster, open a Windows Command Prompt – navigate to the location where you have stored the Service Pack 2 installation binaries and type in the following command:

setup.com /m:upgrade

Setup will begin the process of updating the physical binaries on the passive node, when this process is completed you should reboot he passive node, when it has come back up – follow the pre-requisites again.
Still on the passive node open an Exchange Management Shell window and stop the Clustered Mailbox Server instance with the following command:

Stop-ClusteredMailboxServer –id –StopReason “Upgrade to Service Pack 2”

You will then need to move the stopped CMS instance to the upgraded Passive Node – to do this use the following command:

Move-ClusteredMailboxServer –id –TargetNode –MoveComment “Service Pack 2” –Confirm:$false

Remember at this stage - DO NOT start the CMS instance.

When you have moved your clustered Instance to the passive node – close the Exchange Management Shell and then open a Command Prompt; then navigate to the SP2 setup binaries on the Passive node.
Type in the following command (as per above);

setup.com /upgradeCMS

This will then upgrade the CMS instance – see above.

When the CMS has been successfully upgraded, you need to logon the previously active node and run through the setup.com /m:upgrade sequence again (see above).
Once your final nodes have been upgraded you should logon to the Exchange Management Console; to check the build versions of your servers – SP2 will display in the console as “Version 8.2 (Build 176.2)” – see below:

Alternatively you can use the Exchange Management Shell via the following command:

Get-ExchangeServer | select Name,AdminDisplayVersion

Summary

Hopefully this guide will provide you with any help that you need in upgrading your Exchange Servers to SP2 – good luck!