If you are seeing this error, check that you meet the Active Directory requirements and go through the checks below:
- Check that your Exchange server is joined to the domain
- Check that there are no firewalls between the Exchange server and the domain controllers. This is not supported.
- Check that your Exchange server can route traffic to the domain controllers
- Check DNS resolution. You should be able to ping domain.local and have it respond with the IP of a domain controller. Also, use nslookup to confirm that you can retrieve the IPs of your domain controllers.
- Check that you have a domain controller and global catalog in the site that you are installing Exchange
- Check that you are running Exchange setup as a domain user
- Check that you are running Exchange setup as a user which is a member of Schema Admins and Enterprise Admins
- Check that the Schema master FSMO role is in the same AD site as the Exchange server if you are upgrading or installing a new version of Exchange
- Check that you meet the Exchange requirements for network and directory servers here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996719(v=exchg.150).aspx