Share via

schema upgrade

Rising Flight 5,036 Reputation points
2025-04-29T06:33:30.7466667+00:00

Hi all,

I am using an Exchange 2016 hybrid environment, and my Exchange 2016 server is running the latest Cumulative Update (CU). Since Microsoft does not support an in-place upgrade from Exchange 2016 to Exchange 2019, I plan to set up a new Exchange 2019 infrastructure.

Before installing Exchange 2019, I want to upgrade the Active Directory schema. I have downloaded Exchange Server 2019 CU15 (2025 H1) from the following URL:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=106402

I have mounted the Exchange 2019 ISO on my domain controller, which is running Windows Server 2022 with a functional level of Windows Server 2016.

If I execute the following commands to upgrade the schema and prepare Active Directory, will that be sufficient? Or are there any additional prerequisites that need to be installed on the domain controller?

E:\Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataON /PrepareSchema
E:\Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataON /PrepareAD
Exchange Server Development
Exchange Server Development
Exchange Server: A family of Microsoft client/server messaging and collaboration software.Development: The process of researching, productizing, and refining new or existing technologies.
578 questions

1 answer

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Hien-L 1,910 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff
    2025-04-29T07:10:55.8766667+00:00

    Hi Rising Flight,

    Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

    We don’t have to install other tools or software on DC. Here are some additional suggestions for you before prepare AD and schema:

    1. Please confirm that your admin account needs to be a member of the Schema Admins and Enterprise Admins security groups.
    2. Current DC that you used to prepare AD and schema needs to be a member of the same Active Directory domain and site as the schema master and must be able to contact all of the domains in the forest on TCP port 389.
    3. We also need to prepare AD domain with the following command: E:\Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataON /PrepareAllDomains Or only prepare specific domain: E:\Setup.exe /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms_DiagnosticDataON /PrepareDomain:domain_FQDN If the domain that you want to prepare was created after you ran /PrepareAD, your account also needs to be a member of the Organization Management role group in Exchange.

    You could find more details from the following article:

    Prepare Active Directory and domains for Exchange Server, Active Directory Exchange Server, Exchange Server Active Directory, Exchange 2019 Active Directory | Microsoft Learn

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

    0 comments

Your answer

Answers can be marked as Accepted Answers by the question author, which helps users to know the answer solved the author's problem.