Microsoft Tag for Mobile Phones

So Microsoft has come out with this new application called Microsoft Tag.  If you download the application to your mobile device and have it scan this barcode below it will take you to my blog.  You can download the software from http://www.microsoft.com/tag/

OCS 2007 R2 CWA public configuration

So today I was looking through the VSP (Voice Specialized Partner)  test scenarios and noticed that I am going to need to be able to join a desktop sharing session from the internet.  We are required to “verify” our configuration with Microsoft in order to become “specialized” in OCS 2007 R2, we are already a VSP in OCS 2007.  I had some problems with this initially internally due to the 2 new CNAME records that need to be added for desktop sharing to work correctly.

Those records are..
as.ocsserverfqdn or pool fqdn
download.ocsserverfqdn or pool fqdn

IE..
as.lab-ocsr2.voxlab.local
download.lab-ocsr2.voxlab.local

So for external use of desktop sharing you would need to create something like that in your public DNS zone.  Here is what I did.

I already had the ISA 2006 reverse proxy configured for use with OCS so I added a new web publishing rule and firewall rule for CWA.  This will vary based on your configuration basically you need to get the URL passed through correctly.

I had an externalwebfarm fqdn already published in exrernal DNS which is ocs-abs.voxns.com

So I added 2 CNAME records pointed to that A record as follows…

as.ocs-abs.voxns.com
download.ocs-abs.voxns.com

I then needed to add those URL’s to the public tab of the ISA firewall rule so that ISA would accept them.  Once I did that everything worked perfectly.

If anyone has any questions please feel free to leave a comment.

OCS R2 update

I have installed and configured the following OCS R2 Roles…

Standard Edition Front End
Mediation Server
Group Chat
Archving Server
Monitoring Server
Access Edge

The only server that seems to be acting a bit wierd is the group chat role.  That role was also a bit tricky to get installed.  Be sure to follow the documentation or you will have some issues.

If anyone has any questions regarding any of the OCS R2 roles please do not hesitate to leave a comment.  I will be deploying a NET gateway in the next couple of weeks and will then prepare for our  OCSR2 Verification call with Microsoft.

OCSR2 Launch Event

Please join the OCSR2 Launch event at http://www.ocsr2launch.com

This will take place February 3rd 2009.

OCS 2007 R2 and Nortel CS1000?

So I recently installed the OCS 2007 R2 Front End and Mediation server.  I am now trying to find out if Nortel actually supports R2 at this point in time.

I emailed a contact at Nortel and he told me that OCS R2/Nortel Converged Office would not be available until April 2009.  I am now waiting for a response on if the CS1000 Rel 5.5 will support Direct SIP with OCS R2??

 

Here is the answer I got…

I sent this out, here is the answer I got back:

 

We will support OCS R2 on CS1000 Rls. 5.5 with a target availability of April. The support for R2 when available will be the same functionality that we have available today with OCS and CS 1000 Rls. 5.5. There will be some incremental PEPs and an Upissue to MCM to address issues identified during  our validation process.

The following collocation scenarios are explicitly not supported for Office Communications Server 2007 R2:

The following collocation scenarios are explicitly not supported for Office Communications Server 2007 R2:

 

¾  Any server role on an Active Directory domain controller

 

¾  Any server role on an Active Directory global catalog server

 

¾  Exchange UM and Office Communications Server

 

¾  Edge servers and any other Office Communications Server role

 

¾  Edge servers and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA)

 

¾  Director or Mediation Server with any other Office Communications Server R2 role

 

¾  Group Chat Server with any other Office Communications Server role.

 

¾  Virtualization of any role in Office Communication Server R2 Beta

OCS 2007 R2 Front End Server Deployment

So installing the OCS 2007 R2 Front End Server is not that bad after installing the 64 bit version of Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008.

I needed to move my Schema information from the system partition to the configuration partition.  After getting through that (which was quite interesting) all seems to be ok.  I moved my user account and can communicate with OCS 2007 and R2 users.

I will post some information regarding the partition data moves later.

Here is the process of moving the AD info…

 

If you deployed Live Communications Server 2005 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or Office Communications Server 2007 with global settings in the root domain System container and you experience performance issues, you can use the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Global Settings Migration Tool to migrate to the Configuration container.

Important:

For Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1, you can use this procedure only after you apply Windows update provided in Knowledge Base article 911996. Without the update, Live Communications Server 2005 does not support storing global settings in the Configuration container. For more details, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 911996 “Description of the update for Live Communications Server 2005: February 10, 2006, rereleased July 11, 2006,” at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911996.

If you also plan to upgrade to Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you must migrate the global settings before you upgrade. Once you upgrade to the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Active Directory schema, you can no longer use the Global Settings Migration tool to migrate your global settings.

You can run any of the following steps in read-only test mode by appending the /Check parameter to the MigrateOcsGlobalSettings command. This parameter prints the status of target objects and properties without making updates.

If any of the following steps fails to complete successfully due to network, replication, or permission issues, you can rerun the step until it completes successfully.

Important:

Before you begin the migration process, use the Office Communications Server snap-in to stop all Office Communications Server services on all Office Communications Servers.

To migrate global settings to Configuration container

1. Copy the global settings tree structure to the Configuration container by opening a command prompt and then running the following command:

cscript MigrateOcsGlobalSettings.vbs /Action:MigrateGlobalSettingsTree

1. Copy the global settings attributes to the Configuration container as follows:

cscript MigrateOcsGlobalSettings.vbs /Action: MigrateGlobalSettingsProperties

1. For Office Communications Server 2007 and Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1, run forest preparation to set permissions as follows:

Important:

Do not use the Office Communications Server Prep Forest wizard for this step. The wizard will show that the forest is already prepared, although the ACEs are not in the new container yet.

LcsCmd /Forest /Action:ForestPrep /global:configuration

For Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1, also run domain preparation in every domain the runs Live Communications Server as follows:

LcsCmd /Domain /Action: DomainPrep

Wait for the global settings tree to replicate to most forest global catalogs before proceeding to the next step.

1. Update server distinguished name (DN) references to the new global settings tree as follows:

cscript MigrateOcsGlobalSettings.vbs /Action: MigrateServerDnReferences /SearchBaseDN:<server search baseDN>   /searchbasedn:voxlab,dc=local — – — –  This is the name of your domain in LDAP format.  My domain name is voxlab.local

Where /SearchBaseDN specifies the migration scope for servers.

1. Update DN references for user, contact, and inetOrgPerson objects to point to new global settings tree as follows:

cscript MigrateOcsGlobalSettings.vbs /Action: MigrateUserDnReferences /SearchBaseDN:<user search base DN>

Where /SearchBaseDN specifies the migration scope for users.

Wait for this step to complete before proceeding to the next step (for example, with stable network connectivity, it takes about one hour to migrate 30,000 users).

Use the Office Communications Server snap-in to restart the Office Communications Server services.

1. Try to send instant messages and perform some conferencing tasks to verify that the migration was successful.
2. Remove the original global settings tree structure from the System container as follows:

Important:

Do not perform this step until steps 5 and 6 are complete.

cscript MigrateOcsGlobalSettings.vbs /Action: DeleteSystemGlobalSettingsTree

Here is where you can find the global setting migration tool…
 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=23236784-508e-44c9-809d-30ff245928d8&DisplayLang=en