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 Preview: Prerequisites

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Michel de Rooij

Note: This article is based on a pre-release product and may therefor be subject to changes.

Yesterday, the Exchange team released the preview (you can also call this a public beta) of Microsoft Exchange Server 2013. The build version of the Exchange 2013 Preview is 15.0.466.10.

You can download the 1,5GB self-extracting Exchange 2013 Preview here.

Prior to installing Exchange 2013 preview, you need to install the following prerequisites depending on the targeted platform

Note: Clicking the checkmark leads to the download.

Component	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1	Windows Server 2012
.NET Framework 4.5 RC
Windows Management Framework 3.0 RC
UCMA 4.0 Preview
Office 2010 Filter Pack (Mbx)
Office 2010 Filter Pack SP1 (Mbx)
Windows Identity Foundation (KB974405)
KB2619234
KB2533623

Note: When present, uninstall the Visual C++ 11 Beta Redistributable after installing the UCMA component. On Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 you also need to register ASP.NET after uninstalling the VC++ 11 Beta Redistributable, before installing Exchange 2013, using:
%SystemDrive%\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -ir -enable
followed by an IISReset.

Required Windows Features
These cmdlets install the required Windows features:

Cmdlets	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1	Windows Server 2012
CAS	Import-Module ServerManager; Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS; Install-WindowsFeature Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework, NET-HTTP-Activation, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, RSAT-Web-Server, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http	Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS; Add-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation
MBX or CAS/MBX	Import-Module ServerManager; Install-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS; Install-WindowsFeature Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework, NET-HTTP-Activation, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, RSAT-Web-Server, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI	Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS; Add-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Desktop-Experience, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation

Firewall
On Windows Server 2012, create an inbound firewall rule for port 139 when installing Client Access server.

Active Directory Requirements
Be advised that a minimum of 1 Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller and Global Catalog server is required in each site where you want to install Exchange 2013 Preview. Windows Server 2003 Forest Level is supported.

After successfully preparing Active Directory for Exchange 2013, the schema version will be 15132, Forest version 15448 and the Domain version 13236. More information on how to verify those values here.

To quickly check the level of your domain controllers, you can use the script provided here which will report the msDS-Behavior-Version attribute (3 = 2008).

Order of things
Microsoft recommends you install Mailbox servers before installing Client Access servers.

IPv6
Like Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013 supports IPv6. However, a pure IPv6 environment isn’t supported, so IPv4 is still required.

Co-Existence
Everybody who’s still running on Exchange 2003 (many customers are) need to follow an intermediate upgrade path when moving to Exchange 2013 when it goes RTM, as co-existence between Exchange 2013 and Exchange Server 2003 isn’t supported. Note that the preview version isn’t supported in co-existence with any Exchange version by the way.

Release Notes
Be sure to also check out the Release Notes here.

The UC Architects Podcast S01E03

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Michel de Rooij

The 3rd episode of The UC Architects is here. The UC Architects is a bi-weekly podcast on Exchange and Lync Server.

This episode is hosted by Steve Goodman, who’s joined by Mahmound Magdy, Tom Arbuthnot, Justin Morris and Ståle Hansen.

Topics discussed in this episode are:

Live@EDU/Office365;
Upcoming certificate changes that affect Exchange and Lync;
Windows 8 and Windows 2012 impact on Unified Communications;
Questions from Facebook, including merging/migrating two Lync organizations;
Tools for troubleshooting Lync

You can get the podcast here.

Previews Exchange 2013 and Lync 2013 are here!

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Michel de Rooij

Today, Microsoft unleashed the (Wave 15) previews for the following products:

Review: iPhone with Exchange 2010: Business Integration & Deployment

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Michel de Rooij

A while back, I was asked if I wanted to review a book written by Exchange fellow Steve Goodman. The full title of the book is “iPhone with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010: Business Integration and Deployment” and it’s Steve’s first book. However, I didn’t take that into account when writing this short review.

Overall, the book is a well written blend of Exchange and iPhone related content. Now, I look at products called “iPhone and/with ..” with a certain amount of skepticism. In such cases I expect something of which a marketing department decided that adding “iPhone” to the title could increase sales or justify a higher price, all because iPhone sells.

However, when reading through the 290 pages I was pleasantly surprised the book touches iPhone related contents some Exchange administrators may have never experienced first hand, like using the iPhone Configuration Utility. From my experience, most customers treat an iPhone device for what they are, YAEASC (Yet Another Exchange ActiveSync Client).

From an Exchange perspective, the book is extensive and covers topics like server roles and Database Availability Groups, but doesn’t cover all topics and not in too much details. For example, the book mentions that you need to make arrangements in order to make the environment available via the internet, but a little guidance on reverse proxy settings or how the important autodiscover process works might be helpful.

Overall, the book does a good job of trying to cover the gray area between iPhones and Exchange server, and could be appealing to Apple shops wanting to implement Exchange or a customer with Exchange or Office 365 looking for ways to manage iPhone end user devices. If you’re looking for in-depth information on Exchange only or PowerShell/Exchange Management Shell, I’d recommend like “Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Inside Out” by Tony Redmond or Microsoft Exchange 2010 PowerShell Cookbook by Mike Pfeiffer.

You can check for the book on Amazon here (Kindle version here).

The UC Architects Podcast S01E02

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Michel de Rooij

Today, the 2nd episode of The UC Architects saw daylight. The UC Architects is a bi-weekly podcast on Exchange and Lync Server. This episode is hosted by Pat Richard, who’s joined by Tom Arbuthnot, Johan Veldhuis, John A Cook and Andrew Price.

In this episode, discussed are topics like Lync CU6, Lync and wildcard certificates, Exchange Mailbox Corruption and Poison Mailboxes. as well as some tips and upcoming events.

You can get the podcast through here.