As many of you know I’ve been playing around with Exchange 2010 for some time, but I had to post credits to the Exchange Team for including a nice directory called “scripts” which not only includes some useful scripts but also includes xml answers files for the servermanagercmd .  These xml files will deploy the required roles and features the Exchange 2010 server role will require.  In the old days of Exchange 2007 these answer files were not readily available and you had to either use the GUI which could cause inconsistency of Exchange deployments or leave room for error i.e. missing a required feature. 

You may be asking, where can I find these answer files?  They are located on the installation DVD under scripts.  Just look for the XML files.  They are pretty obvious when you see them since they are named exchange-base or exchange-hub or exchange-mbx etc etc.  

Thanks Guys for simplifying this deployment!

I should point out that these answer files are also available in Exchange 2007 SP2.