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.

BinaryTree product updates for Exchange 2010

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Binary Tree’s Common Migration Tool for Exchange, a cross-platform messaging migration and coexistence tool, has been updated to support direct migration and coexistence between Lotus Domino and Exchange Server 2010.

You can register here for an online event and presentation on their upgraded products and direct migration from Domino to Exchange 2010.

(Thanks to Brettjo)

Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant updated

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

Today Microsoft updated their Exchange 2010 Deployment Assistant.It got updated after the initial release in mid-November where you could only select upgrading from Exchange 2003. Now all scenarios work, so you can select if you’re upgrading from Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2003/2007 or performing a greenfield Exchange 2010 installation.

After selecting the scenario you will be asked a few questions, such as “Are you running a disjounted namespace?” or “Are you planning to to use public folders in Exchange 2010?” (nooooo). When finished you’ll be presented a checklist.

While the tool is available online-only, you can download the checklist for offline use by clicking Download Checklist (top right). This will download the checklist in PDF format. It’s a good reference for planning and can be a useful tool to keep track of where you are in the process.

Exchange virtualization

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

A much asked question these days, is Exchange supported in a virtualized environment? As in many cases, the answer is “it depends”. Microsoft supports virtualized Exchange under the following conditions:

Hardware virtualization software used is one of the following products:
- For Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010: Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, Hyper-V Server 2008 or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2;
- For Exchange 2003: Virtual Server 2005 R2;
- In general, any validated 3rd party hypervisor (check for ESX, XenServer versions etc.). Click here for the list.
Exchange guest
- Exchange 2003 SP2 (or later)
  - Virtual Machine Additions and Virtual Machine PCI SCSI driver required;
  - Exchange 2003 clusters aren’t supported;
- Exchange 2007 SP1 (or later)
  - is running on Windows Server 2008;
  - support for Windows Server 2008 R2 expected with Exchange Server 2007 SP3 (no date announced yet);
  - No Unified Messaging role (due to real-time requirements by UM role);
  - Meets all of the Exchange 2007 SP1 specific requirements (here).
- Exchange 2010
  - is running on Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2;
  - No Unified Messaging role (due to real-time requirements by UM role);
  - Meets all of the Exchange 2010 specific requirements (here);
  - HA features (DAG) aren’t supported in combination with virtualization clustering or high-available solutions.
- Earlier versions of Exchange than Exchange 2003 are not supported

Exchange versions, builds and dates

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

(content moved to a dedicated page, located here)

HP Exchange 2010 Sizing Tool

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Michel de Rooij

HP has released their sizing tool for Exchange 2010. This successor to the Exchange 2007 Sizing tool does recommendations for deployment and sizing of servers and storage and includes a (HP) bill of materials. The tool supports multi-site deployments, Database Availability Groups (DAG), DAS or or SAN-based storage and high availability and client options.

As with the 2007 version it uses a combination of technical and business requirements and projects best practices for high available Exchange configurations (when applicable). The tool can update itself and the product information it uses.

You can download the HP Sizer for Exchange Server 2010 here.