After Exchange 2010 SP1 became publicly available I wrote, apart from the SP1 changes, also on the prerequisites differences, comparing Windows Server 2008 with Windows Server 2008 R2. Note that these prerequisites are additional to the server roles and features required to install Exchange 2010 server roles.

With the recent release of Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 a new operating system level was introduced to the spectrum. It would be interesting to see what impact R2 SP1 has on these prerequisites. When we put that Exchange 2010 SP1 prerequisites in a table, comparing them to Windows Server 2008 R2 prerequisites, we get the following:

That’s excellent, no hotfixes to install upfront and the required reboot that goes with it. For the suspicious, here’s a what Setup reported missing on a freshly installed Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 server:

So, we can conclude going straight to Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with Exchange 2010 SP1 should make the job of deploying Exchange 2010 SP1 easier and save you some time.