A short blog on a small survey I’ve been running for some time now on the usage of Install-Exchange15, the PowerShell script for fully automated deployment of Exchange 2013 or Exchange 2016.

I started the survey because I was curious on a few things:

• How the script is used; do folks use it for deploying in lab environments, or also actual production environments.
• What Exchange versions are deployed; only current ones (n-2 at most, i.e. lagging 2 Cumulative Update generations at most), or also older versions.
• What operating systems are used to deploy Exchange using this script.

The second and last items are of most interest, as keeping backward compatibility in the script, for example like deploying Exchange Server 2013 SP1 on Windows Servers 2008, requires keeping a lot of ‘legacy code’ in there.

Fortunately, the survey shows many of you use the script to deploy recent Exchange builds on current operating systems. So, in time, you will see support for older builds and operating systems being removed, making the script more lean and mean as well.

Now, on to the results:

In what environments do you use the script to deploy Exchange?

Do you use Install-Exchange15.ps1 for previous (N-2 or older) Exchange 2013/2016 builds?

On which Operating Systems do you deploy Exchange 2013/2016? (multiple options possible)

Finally, a summary of the feedback and requests send in by respondents through the open comments section:

• Installation on Windows Server 2016. The survey was created before Windows Server 2016 was supported, so we used the feedback given on people deploying on WS2016 in the above results.
• In general, positive feedback on having this script for automated deployment, as well as the SCP feature.
• Request for having a GUI to create the answer file.
• Request to having the option to configure the virtual directories after installation. However, the script allows for inserting custom (Exchange) cmdlets in its post-configure phase.
• Request to output cause of failed Exchange setup to the screen. That however, is something I wouldn’t recommend; the Exchange setup log files contain the details.
• Request to have some sort of visible clue if the installation was successful or not.