Subtitles of the Movie

The Domain Functional Levels that you have available to you in Active Directory are going to impact your Exchange Server installation and the bottom line is, your Domain Functional Levels are going to have to be at a certain level before you can put Exchange 2010 in there. And again, Microsoft can be a bit confusing with some of these names and the naming style that they use and so I want to step through this and make sure that you understand what these Functional Levels are and then how they relate back to Exchange. First of all, there are four Windows Server 2003 Domain Functional Levels, so the way this is going to impact you, both on the Domain Functional Level and when you look at the video about Forest Functional Levels is, keep in mind, that at one point when Windows Server 2003 came out we began to put Server 2003 boxes into our Active Directory domains, and once we had all the Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0 out then we could raise that Domain Functional Level. And so from a real world standpoint, not just a Microsoft marketing standpoint, we really do want to get our domains as raised to the latest Operating System as consistently possible. And then we want to keep raising that Domain Functional Level so we take advantage of all the new bells and whistles and functionalities in whatever version of Active Directory that we're running. Now the first Domain Functional Level for the Windows Server 2003 environment was Windows 2000 Mixed and this supported Windows 2000, Server 2003, and NT 4.0 Domain Controllers. Now this was going way back. This is going back over 10 years of functionality. Now the Windows 2000 Native Domain Functional Level allowed you to support Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Domain Controllers. The Windows Server 2003 Interim Domain Functional Level allowed you to support Windows 2003 and Windows NT 4.0 Domain Controllers, and this was to allow the people who maybe didn't jump to Windows 2000 to jump from NT 4.0 up to Server 2003 and it did some other things but you're probably going to very rare see that nowadays. Now when we jump up to Windows Server 2008 understand that once we start installing 2008 in our domains that we then have three Functional Domain Levels that we can work with. The first one is Windows 2000 Native and this one supports Windows 2000 Domain Controllers, Windows Server 2003 Domain Controllers, and Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers. Now keep in mind that even though the Windows Server 2008 domains will support the Windows 2000 boxes, Exchange will not, and so just keep that in mind. So Windows Server 2003 Domain Functional Levels supports Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers. Now this is the Functional Level you must be at in a domain to install Exchange 2010. And then, of course, there's the Windows Server 2008 Domain Functional Level, and this means that all of my Domain Controllers in my domain are running Windows Server 2008, and so they're all taking advantage, they're all speaking the same Active Directory language, and they're all taking advantage of all the latest enhancements and cool little features of Active Directory at the Windows Server 2008 level, whatever version of Active Directory that is. So now, let's talk about these Domain Functional Levels and how they impact the design of an Exchange environment. First of all, Exchange's requirement is very simple, is that every domain that contains an Exchange 2010 Server must be at the Windows Server 2003 Domain Functional Level or higher. The bottom line in English is this means there can be no Windows Server 2000 boxes in the domain. If you have any old Windows 2000 boxes out there you're going to have to get those upgraded at least to Windows Server 2003 in every domain where you're going to have an Exchange Server or you're not going to be able to get Exchange 2010 to behave. Or actually, you're not going to be able to get it to load. So, that's the Domain Functional Levels. These get real confusing so just kind of make sure that you understand these. The simple things to understand, you need to be at Windows Server 2003 in any domain that's going to have Exchange Server and you may have 10 or 15 domains in your organization and you'll have to go on a domain-by-domain basis to check it and to raise it, OK? So that's your Domain Functional Levels.