When you’re going to install Exchange 2010, you’ve to prepare your environment before you can start the installation.

The fist step is to prepare the Schema.

1.) Open the root directory of the Exchange 2010 installation files
2.) Run the following command: .\Setup /PrepareSchema
Note: make sure you’ve SchemaAdmin rights

The next step is to prepare the Active Directory.

1.) Run the following command: .\Setup /PrepareAD /OrganizationName:<Your-Organization-Name>

The last step is to prepare the Domain.

1.) Run the following command: .\Setup /PrepareDomain
Note: make sure you’ve DomainAdmin rights

Your environment is now succesfully prepared to install Exchange 2010.

After you’ve installed a new Exchange 2010 environment and you try to delete the first automatically created mailbox database, you’ll receive the following error.

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The mailbox database ‘DB01′ cannot be deleted.

DB01
Failed
Error:
This mailbox database contains one or more mailboxes or arbitration mailboxes. To get a list of all mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID>. To get a list of all arbitration mailboxes in this database, run the command Get-Mailbox -Database <Database ID> -Arbitration. To disable a non-arbitration mailbox so that you can delete the mailbox database, run the command Disable-Mailbox <Mailbox ID>. Arbitration mailboxes should be moved to another server; run the command Move-Mailbox <Mailbox ID> -Arbitration -TargetDatabase <Database ID>.  To remove the arbitration mailbox if this is the last server in the organization, run the command Remove-Mailbox <Mailbox ID> -Arbitration -RemoveLastArbitrationMailboxAllowed.
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You cannot remove the database, because there are some mailboxes in it. Oké….let’s have look what mailboxes are left in this mailbox database.

Get-Mailbox -Database DB01

As you can see, there are no mailboxes left in de mailbox database, but why we are still receiving this error!! This is the answer…….there are two hidden mailboxes left in de mailbox database, called arbitration mailboxes. With the following command you’re able to see this mailboxes

Get-Mailbox -Database DB01 -Arbitration | ft -wrap -auto

When you move these two mailboxes to another mailbox database, all the error messages are gone! So let’s do that!

Move-Mailbox “SystemMailbox{1f05a927-3be2-4fb9-aa03-b59fe3b56f4c}”  -Arbitration -TargetDatabase DB02
Move-Mailbox “SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}”  -Arbitration -TargetDatabase DB02

Exchange 2010 uses a new mechanism for High Availability. Watch this interresting movie from one of the members of the Exchange 2010 team.

 The continuous availability architecture built into Exchange 2010 provides new benefits for organizations and their messaging administrators:

• Multiple server roles can co-exist on servers that provide high availability. This enables small organizations to deploy a two-server configuration provides full redundancy of mailbox data, while also providing redundant Client Access and Hub Transport services.
• An administrator no longer needs to build a failover cluster in order to achieve high availability. Failover clusters are now created by Exchange 2010 in a way that is invisible to the administrator. Unlike previous versions of Exchange clusters which used an Exchange-provided cluster resource DLL named ExRes.dll, Exchange 2010 no longer needs or uses a cluster resource DLL. Exchange 2010 uses only a small portion of the failover cluster components, namely, its heartbeat capabilities and the cluster database, in order to provide database mobility.
• Administrators can add high availability to their Exchange 2010 environment after Exchange has been deployed, without having to uninstall Exchange and then re-deploy in a highly availability configuration.
• Exchange 2010 provides a view of the event stream that combines the events from the operating system with the events from Exchange.
• Because storage group objects no longer exist in Exchange 2010, and because mailbox databases are portable across all Exchange 2010 Mailbox servers, it is very easy to move databases when needed.