Welcome to Rui Silva's Section

Rui Silva is a Senior Consultant, working mainly with Microsoft Technologies at Unisys Portugal. He is MCDBA / MCSA / MCSE:Messaging / MCSE:Security certified and has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for Exchange Server, due to his contributions to several technical forums. Rui spends some of his (little) free time updating the Exchange dedicated blogs http://blogs.msexchange.org/silva, http://msmvps.com/ehlo (in English) and http://ehlo.blogspot.com (in Portuguese). But because he has a passion for writing, he authors some technical articles, as seen at this site, and he has a permanent work-in-progress project for a Portuguese Exchange Server book.

Rui specializes in all kinds of Microsoft Technologies, with particular emphasis on Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory. He is often involved in migration and implementation projects for some large companies in Portugal.

Rui is often seen working at the Ask The Experts area of major Microsoft technical events, such as Tech.Ed or IT-Forum.

Rui Silva's Latest Contributions

Monitoring Exchange 2007 With System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Part 2): Date - Dec 09, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; How to enable certificate based authentication for monitoring Exchange Edge servers that do not belong to the domain.
Monitoring Exchange 2007 With System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Part 1): Date - Nov 11, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; A configuration guide for monitoring Exchange Server 2007 with System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2007.
12 Tips to Optimize an Exchange 2007 Infrastructure (Part 2): Date - Sep 11, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Management & Administration; last 6 tips (out of 12) that can contribute to a better optimized Exchange 2007 environment, making it healthier, more stable, more secure, and more reliable.
12 Tips to Optimize an Exchange 2007 Infrastructure (Part 1): Date - Aug 26, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Management & Administration; A set of tips regarding the optimization of the Exchange Server 2007 environment.
Exchange 2007 Sizing Cheat Sheet: Date - Aug 12, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Planning & Architecture; How to correctly size the different Exchange Server 2007 roles.
Managing Exchange 2003 with SCOM 2007 (Part 2): Date - Jun 03, 2008; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; Detailed configuration of the Exchange 2003 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007. Creating overrides and common troubleshooting.
Managing Exchange 2003 with SCOM 2007 (Part 1): Date - May 20, 2008; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; A configuration guide for monitoring Exchange Server 2003 with System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007.
Continuous Backup for Exchange Server with DPM 2007 (Part 4): Date - May 01, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; How to restore a storage group, a mailbox store or a single mailbox using Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007.
Continuous Backup for Exchange Server with DPM 2007 (Part 3): Date - Apr 01, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; Advanced configuration of the DPM 2007 server and delving into the Exchange backup process.
Continuous Backup for Exchange Server with DPM 2007 (Part 2): Date - Mar 11, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; How to configure Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007 and create a Protection Group for Exchange Server.
Continuous Backup for Exchange Server with DPM 2007 (Part 1): Date - Feb 14, 2008; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Monitoring & Operations; A step-by-step guide on how to use Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007 to back up Exchange Server 2007.
Shared Hosting with Exchange 2007 (Part 3): Date - Nov 13, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Migration & Deployment; How to set up complementary services for a hosting solution with Exchange Server 2007 and final tests.
Shared Hosting with Exchange 2007 (Part 2): Date - Oct 23, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Migration & Deployment; Modifying Active Directory permissions and tweaking some attributes and properties, to provision the hosted users with the right Address List, Global Address List and Offline Address Book.
Shared Hosting with Exchange 2007 (Part 1): Date - Oct 04, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Migration & Deployment; How to implement Exchange 2007 hosting services for multiple customers with a simple Exchange 2007 deployment scenario.
Publishing Exchange Client Access with ISA 2006 - The Complete Solution (Part 3): Date - Jun 28, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Mobility & Client Access; ISA Server configuration aspects: web listener and publishing rules.
Publishing Exchange Client Access with ISA 2006 - The Complete Solution (Part 2): Date - Jun 19, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Mobility & Client Access; Configuration settings for Exchange CAS/Front-End and the authentication mechanisms of ISA Server.
Publishing Exchange Client Access with ISA 2006 - The Complete Solution (Part 1): Date - May 31, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Mobility & Client Access; An end-to-end solution for publishing Exchange Server 2003/2007 with ISA Server 2006.
Exchange 2007 Anti Spam Migration Tool: Date - May 08, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Security & Message Hygiene; How to use the Anti Spam Migration Tool to migrate anti-spam settings from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.
Disk Performance Testing with Jetstress 2007: Date - Mar 22, 2007; Section - Exchange 2007 Articles / Tools; Jetstress 2007 installation guide and how to perform a disk performance test.
Hardening an Exchange Server 2003 Environment (Part 4): Date - Dec 07, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Security & Message Hygiene; Focusing on the client side of your messaging environment.
Hardening an Exchange Server 2003 Environment (Part 3): Date - Nov 23, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Security & Message Hygiene; Techniques to help defend against spam, viruses and general e-mail attacks, or how Microsoft likes to call it, messaging hygiene.
Hardening an Exchange Server 2003 Environment (Part 2): Date - Nov 07, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Security & Message Hygiene; This article covers the infrastructure aspects of security, namely what can be done to harden servers in particular and your network in general.
Hardening an Exchange Server 2003 Environment (Part 1): Date - Sep 26, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Security & Message Hygiene; This series of 4 articles explains what can be done to make an Exchange Server 2003 environment more secure.
Backing Up Exchange with Data Protection Manager: Date - Jul 13, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / High Availability & Recovery; Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006 can be used to help you protect your Exchange Server data. In this article I’ll show you how.
Storage Design – Have You Considered iSCSI?: Date - May 25, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Planning & Architecture; In this article I will test the HP NAS device I used in a previous article, this time with an iSCSI configuration.
JetStress Is Your Friend: Date - May 04, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Tools; This article is a quick step-by-step guide for performing a Disk Performance Test with the GUI version of the tool JetStress 2004.
Exchange on NAS: Proved and Approved: Date - Mar 21, 2006; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Planning & Architecture; With the release of Windows Storage Server Feature Pack, putting the Exchange databases on a NAS device started to be a supported configuration, provided that the storage devices are Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) certified (i.e. with the “Designed for Windows” logo). I did some tests using an HP NAS device that proved to be a valid option for some particular configurations. This article is a short description of my experience.
The Art and Science of Sizing Exchange 2003 (Part 3): Date - Dec 01, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Planning & Architecture; In the last 2 parts or this article series I covered the process of sizing the hardware for an Exchange Server. Now it’s time to validate the results, using some stressing tools and monitor software. You’ll also be glad to know that there are some tools that really can help and ease the sizing process.
The Art and Science of Sizing Exchange 2003 (Part 2): Date - Oct 25, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Planning & Architecture; Storage is the most critical component of an Exchange back-end server and it’s usually the cause of performance degradation. If your users are complaining about frequent Outlook messages saying that it’s trying to retrieve data from the Exchange Server, that’s probably a storage bottleneck. Good Exchange planning with proper disk sizing can prevent these kind of problems from happening.
The Art and Science of Sizing Exchange 2003 (Part 1): Date - Oct 06, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Planning & Architecture; I’m pretty sure that it’s, at least, arguable that you can call it art. I don’t know either if it’s deep enough to be called a science. One thing I can assure you is that sizing an Exchange server can be a complex task and it requires not only the knowledge, but also a dose of sensibility and some previous experience with the Microsoft Server family of products. Although there are some pretty good documents from Microsoft about this subject, I’ll try to condense them all and include the main guidelines in this three-part article.
Disclaimer Fun: Date - Jul 07, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Tools; These days almost every corporate e-mail has a disclaimer. Companies use them because of legal issues, as an advertising means or maybe because they think messages look nicer with a disclaimer. Since Exchange Server 5.5 Microsoft has provided a way of adding basic disclaimers to outgoing messages. Let’s see how things have evolved since then and what we can do to extend the provided capabilities.
Disk Geometry: Date - Jun 14, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Planning & Architecture; The storage subsystem is one of the most critical elements on a Microsoft Exchange infra-structure, mainly because of the aggressive random I/O requirements of the Exchange Server 2003 database. The key to a healthy environment is proper configuration of the storage array, considering performance before capacity. One of the measures you can take is to realign the hard disk tracks with the Windows physical disk partitions, increasing performance up to 20 percent.
Just say NO to A/A: Date - May 12, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Planning & Architecture; In my opinion, e-mail is still the internet killer-app. And according to Forbes.com, Exchange is the number one corporate e-mail server. Should you use Exchange clustering? Well, it depends on your business needs and how much are you willing to lose for the downtime. Should you use Active/Active clustering? NO!
10 Tips to Optimize Exchange 2003 Performance (Part 2): Date - May 10, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Management & Administration; Performance is not only about tuning but also about preventing problems. Or maybe it all boils down to getting the most bang for the buck. In part 1 of this article I covered the first 5 tips to achieve better performance with Exchange 2003. In this last part I’ll talk about 5 more tips to help you make a better Exchange design and optimize your environment.
10 Tips to Optimize Exchange 2003 Performance (Part 1): Date - Apr 28, 2005; Section - Exchange 2003 Articles / Management & Administration; We would like to welcome Microsoft MVP Rui J.M. Silva to our team of authors as he presents his first article to MSExchange.org readers. Everybody likes to keep their systems running smoothly and tuned for performance. For simpler scenarios with basic configuration you can probably use Exchange 2003 out-of-the box without ever having performance issues. But if you are responsible for a complex environment, then you have probably already felt the bitter taste of a system bottleneck. If you identify yourself with this description or if you are just a tweak fanatic, then this article is for you.