As most of us know, there are many pre-requisites that must be met before one can successfully deploy Exchange Server 2010. Microsoft also knows this and, being the kindhearted souls that they are, have decided to do something about it.

They’ve created a useful tool called the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer. The Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer performs a readiness scan of your existing environment and reports on configuration items that are either critical (ie will prevent Exchange Server 2010 deployment) or warning (ie will not prevent deployment but may cause issues in some scenarios).

You can download the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer from Microsoft and run it from any server that meets these system requirements:

• Installed operating system is either:
  • Windows 7
  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Server 2008 with SP2
  • Windows Vista with SP2
  • Windows Server 2003 with SP2
• .NET Framework 2.0 or later