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.

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!

The UC Architects Podcast Ep20

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Michel de Rooij

The 20th episode of The UC Architects podcast is now online.

This episode is hosted by Steve Goodman who’s joined by Johan Veldhuis, Michael Van Horenbeeck, Paul Cunningham, John Cook, Justin Morris, Andrew J. Price and yours truly.

Amongst the topics discussed in this episode are:

Exchange 2013 CU1
Lync Updates
Outlook Web App
“Problems in UC”
Scripts
Events

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.

About
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.

Lync Conference 2013 Recordings

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Michel de Rooij

A quick heads-up for everyone working with or interested in Lync Server 2013.

In February, the inaugural Lync Conference was held in San Diego. The conference not only had excellent sessions on Lync and UC related topics but also featured our The UC Architects monster prize draw.

Now, if you were unable to attend – like me – you missed out on but could buy the content for $199 as of March.Fortunately, Microsoft has decided to make presentations and session videos available for free.

You can download the slidedecks and videos here.