About Michel de Rooij

Michel de Rooij, with over 25 years of mixed consulting and automation experience with Exchange and related technologies, is a consultant for Rapid Circle. He assists organizations in their journey to and using Microsoft 365, primarily focusing on Exchange and associated technologies and automating processes using PowerShell or Graph. Michel's authorship of several Exchange books and role in the Office 365 for IT Pros author team are a testament to his knowledge. Besides writing for Practical365.com, he maintains a blog on eightwone.com with supporting scripts on GitHub. Michel has been a Microsoft MVP since 2013.

And the award goes to ..

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

Hurray, look what I found in my Inbox today ..

Congratulations! We’re pleased to inform you that your contributions to Microsoft online technical communities have been recognized with the Microsoft Community Contributor Award.

The Microsoft Community Contributor Award is reserved for participants who have made notable contributions in Microsoft online community forums such as TechNet, MSDN and Answers. The value of these resources is greatly enhanced by participants like you, who voluntarily contribute your time and energy to improve the online community experience for others.

and here’s the logo that goes with it:

Exchange 2010 Mailbox Role Calculator 14.4

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

Missed this one, but apparantly the Microsoft Exchange Team silently released a small update of the Exchange Mailbox Role Calculator, bringing it to version 14.4.

This version includes the following fixes since 14.2:

Fixed stretched DAG scenario that had one database copy in each datacenter not reporting results due to new copy validation check
Fixed secondary datacenter log disk calculations to correctly calculate the formatted disk space
Fixed Table headers in the Storage Design tab to show disk count / Secondary datacenter
Fixed two-node stretched DAG scenario that resulted in calculator not reporting results due to new copy validation check

You can download the calculator here, consult the changeblog here or read through the usage instructions here.

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RTM’ed

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 (and Windows 7) being released to manufacturing (RTM) today. This is great news after an extensive beta period. Organizations can now plan for SP1 deployments. With SP1, organizations can use new features like Dynamic Memory, for increased virtual machine density, and RemoteFX for an enhanced Remote Desktop experience.

The availability of Service Pack 1 may also encourage customers with “SP0 anxiety” to start implementing Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7.

Availability of SP1 is scheduled as follows:

February 16: Available to TechNet/MSDN subscribers and Volume Licensing customers;
February 22: General availability through Download Center and Windows Update.

Update: The Exchange Team blog published an item stating Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 support for:

Exchange 2007 SP3
Exchange 2010 RTM
Exchange 2010 SP1

So, unlike earlier rumors, you don’t need to wait for Exchange 2010 SP2. What this means for the list of hotfix prerequisites remains to be seen. Note that the Exchange 2010 Supportability Matrix doesn’t mention Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 yet.

Outlook 2007 personal archives issue, fix in Feb’11 CU

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Michel de Rooij

The Exchange team put a notice up today on their website on an important update for Outlook 2007 regarding personal archive support on Exchange 2010. Unfortunately, the post doesn’t contain any information regarding the issue itself, only that it may result in inaccessible archives. The fix will be included in the February 2011 Cumulative Update for Office 2007, which is to be released later this February.

This Outlook 2007 personal archive support is becoming some story. After the the initial update enabling this functionality, Outlook 2007 Cumulative Update of December (kb2412171), the update was re-released in January to include 3 fixes (see kb2485531). Now we can expect another fix for an undisclosed issue.

I suggest keeping an eye on the Outlook team blog for updates regarding this issue.