Exchange 12 Beta 1 problems with MMC 3.0

I'm catching up on my blogging today. If you have signed up for the Exchange 12 Community Technology Preview (CTP) and tried to install Exchange 12 recently, you will notice that the prerequisite link for installing the Microsoft Management Console 3.0 never goes away on the main setup page. Even after installing the latest release of MMC 3.0 If you continue past this (or try to get sneaky and use the setup.exe command-line), it still informs you that you need MMC 3.0. You get an error like this:

Exchange Server '12' requires Microsoft Management Console 3.0.

This is because Exchange 12 Beta 1 is looking for an earlier release of the MMC 3.0 software and there is now a newer release. Nino Bilic blogged this recently on the Exchange Team blog and saved me from a number of hours of frustration. To fix this, you only need to create an empty Registry key to fix this. See Nino's blog entry "Resolving MMC 3.0 errors when installing Exchange 12 CTP release" for more information.

As for Beta 1, I'm under NDA (as are all people in the Beta 1 and CTP programs) and I take that seriously so I won't comment on anything that has not already been publicly disclosed by Microsoft. If you want to get a look at some of the new features such as LCR, CCR, Unified Messaging, Exchange Edge services (very cool!), the new server roles (Gateway, Bridgehead, Mailbox, Client Access), and, of course, Monad, then sign up for the Beta.

However, it is Beta code and thus is not as complete as a more refined and releasable version. If you are looking for something closer to the look and feel of the finished product, wait for Exchange 12 Beta 2 due out sometime in the summer. I have got 5 Exchange 12 servers running (in a VMWare environment) and have had some interesting fun, but I have not even tried running my home mailbox server (which only myself and my roommates use) yet with Exchange 12.