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.

The UC Architects Podcast Ep21

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Michel de Rooij

The 21th episode of The UC Architects podcast is now online. The UC Architects is a bi-weekly community podcast by people with a passion for Unified Communications; our main focus is on Exchange, Lync or related subjects.

This episode is hosted by Pat Richard who’s joined by Serkan Varoglu, Johan Veldhuis, Mahmoud Magdy and Dave Stork.

Amongst the topics discussed in this episode are:

Exchange storage design
Exchange 2013 implementation
The mysterious Exchange App
Script converting mail-user to mailbox-user
Evoko Room Manager
Lync and Yahoo federation
Lync Mac 2011 update
Lync Conference contents
Script to find available numbers in Lync
Lync LPE update
Lync desktop sharing issue
TechEd NA/Europe

More information on the podcast including references and a link to download the podcast directly here or you can subscribe to the podcasts using iTunes, Zune or use the RSS feed.

The UC Architects Windows Phone App

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Michel de Rooij

Most of you listen to or at least are aware of our The UC Architects podcast. If not, The UC Architects is the world’s most popular community podcast on Exchange and Lync made by people with a passion for Microsoft Unified Communications.

Now, as of today and thanks to fellow Johan Veldhuis, you can keep track of new podcasts when travelling, check our Tweets or even download and listen to podcasts using the UC Architects Windows Phone App. The app is available for Windows Phone 7 and 8. More information on the app itself can be found on our The UC Architects website.

You can download the app here.

Exchange 2013 KB articles RSS feed

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Michel de Rooij

Like most people I still use RSS feeds to keep track of news and updates from various sources. But not everyone is aware you can keep track of new or updated Microsoft’s knowledgebase articles using RSS feeds, sometimes categorized per product. I already blogged about the availability these feeds about 2,5 years ago.

Now with all the releases since then, it’s time to update this information with current products, especially with the feed for Exchange 2013 related articles becoming available recently:

For a complete list of the knowledgebase articles RSS feeds check here.

Exchange 2013 Server Role Requirements Calculator v5.1

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Michel de Rooij

It’s been long wait since the release of Exchange 2013, but today the Exchange Team finally released the first version of the Exchange 2013 Server Role Requirements Calculator. This initial release is numbered version 5.1.

Some of the highlights over the Exchange 2010 calculator, mostly due to changes in the architecture, are:

The calculator includes transport sizing (hence the name, I guess);
Accommodating for Client Access Server role with sizing for multi-role server deployments;
Support for multiple databases / JBOD volumes;
Configurable witness server location (primary, secondary or tertiary data center);
Configurable server names and database prefixes for generated scripts;
Generated scripts include script for DAG creation;
Support for single HA, Act/Pas and Act/Act distribution models.

You can download the calculator here. For more information, please consult the documentation here.

Exchange 2013 Unattended Installation Script v1.1

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Michel de Rooij

Coming back from a nice vacation to the beautiful Brittany in France, I thought it was time to collect and process feedback and suggestions on several scripts, starting with the Exchange 2013 unattended installation script for Windows Server 2012.

Changes in version 1.1 of the script:

When the script was used to also prepare Active Directory, RSAT-ADDS-Tools was uninstalled as part of the cleanup. Per request, I’ve removed the uninstallation of that feature;
The script now detects pending reboots after installing the required features. When ran in AutoPilot mode, the script will reboot and restart the phase (preparing Active Directory, which can’t be run with pending reboots because Exchange’s Setup won’t like it). When not running in AutoPilot mode, you need to start the script manually. You can omit providing installation parameters as they are saved, even a pending is detected;
The Windows feature Server-Media-Foundation will be installed explicitly as it is an UCMA 4.0 requirement;
The credentials provided for AutoPilot mode will be validated;
The OS version check is changed to a string which should enable installation on non-US Operating Systems.

You can download the updated version of the script via the original Exchange 2013 Unattended Installation Script page or directly from the Technet Gallery. Enjoy!