Hello forums, I'm running Exchange best practice analyzer in anticipation of migrating my Exchange 2003 setup to Exchange 2007. When I run the BPA, I get two Critical Issues, both of them that "Site <sitename> cannot support Exchange 2007 servers" which expand out into "site does not contain any global catalog server running Windows Server 2003 SP1 or later." However, each site has one Server 2008 R2 domain controller, and each domain controller is a global catalog. I confirmed the tick box in Sites and Services, I confirmed GC shows up with the NLTest command, and I checked the flag was set to TRUE with the ldp command. I've gone so far as to run the BPA scanning a another 2008 R2 DC (GC!) at my HQ site, then connected to a 2003 DC holding all my FSMO roles, then from a server next to the remote 2008 R2 DCs. It's consistently coming up with the same critical error for the same sites. It seems to me that Server 2008 R2 should count as "2003 SP1 or later" to the scanner. Is it that the BPA doesn't recognize 2008 R2 DCs as GCs? Or is there something wrong with those servers, despite a lack of errors in event viewer/FRS/replications? I'm not going to be installing Exchange 2007 servers into those sites anyways, but I'm curious why that error is coming up and if that will cause the users in those sites any trouble getting email from the 2007 when they are eventually migrated to it. Thank you for your time!

The DCs in question aren't read-only DCs are they?Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Hi Can you post exchange 2007 version? Do you try install exchange 2007 sp3 and run exbpa?Terence Yu TechNet Community Support

The two 2008 R2 DCs are not RODCs. I have no plan to put a RODC in my domain, so I didn't even do the prep for them when I brought my domain up to 2008 Mixed mode. My existing Exchange environment is 2003 Native. When I install 2007 it will be SP3. I have not tried to install Exchange 2007 SP3 yet, a I didn't want to do the domain prep if I would have trouble with Exchange after I ran the prep.

I was never able to resolve this. I ran the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer 2.8 with the latest updates before installing my 2007 servers and still got the warning on my two 2008 R2 only DC GC sites. Since the install went fine, and my two 2008 R2 only sites are working fine, it appears to be a false warning. Unless anyone knows for certain that Exchange 2007 won't work with Server 2008 R2 DC GCs...