Lync Server 2010 - More Powershell Links (Lync's?) for Lync Server 2010

I might have posted this before, but even so its worth doing again. This is the Lync 2020 Powershell blog and is available here and below.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/

Lync Server 2010 - Powershell

Well I thought it would never happen!! I am starting to get hooked on Powershell!
Scripting? AAAARGH I hear you say! Actually its pretty cool stuff.
As I have an interest in these things now i got reminded here at Teched that Ilsa has a really blog, so here it is! Check it out here

And for those who would like the link instead http://blogs.technet.com/b/ilvancri/

Lync Server 2010

So, apologies for not posting for a Long time. Holidays and a spot of illness got in the way.

Lync Server 2010 REALLY rocks. I have been delivering the Lync Server Ignite course!
5 days of really cool labs and good material.

I am at Teched 2010 in Berlin and I dont think that the penny has dropped yet on how much nicer and haw many more features there are in Lync Server compared to 2010 to a lot the lovely people here.

They will find out. I'll post some more in a short while but

RTM is in 2 weeks!!!

OCS and PBX from Toshiba

Well I learnt something new this week!! I was talking in my OCS class about supported PBX's and mentioned the normal suspects, but Neil from Toshiba told me that Toshiba also had a family of communication platforms. Called the Strata family and which unsurpisingly are in use at Toshiba. So I had to check them out!
You can check them out as well here

OCS Gateway Sizing using Erlang B equation

In OCS it is important that we calculate the size of our Gateways correctly when provisioning Enterprise Voice.
We can use Erlang B equation to to this. So, if you go to http://www.erlang.com/calculator/exeb/ then you can use a free online tool to assist you in calulating the Gateway size.
We can use this tool to establish the probability of a port being open. For loads of more information see the website. For more information on OCS see the Microsoft website.

Mini-Microsoft blog

I found this fascinating! I had never heard of KIN, I suppose it was due to be released in Europe at some point. Looks like it will never make it.
 You can read the blog here

SCCM v.Next Bootable Media enhancements

Hi,

SCCM v.Next is something I am interested in as you know, so when I found this like I was very chuffed.
What is cool about v.Next and bootable media is the way in which it handles the suppression of screens during the boot process. Enough of me prattling on about it! Read it for yourself here or for those who like the whole link here it is http://blogs.technet.com/b/inside_osd/archive/2010/06/30/v-next-beta-1-feature-bootable-media-improvements-part-2.aspx

Make sure you have a read of the other parts as well!

Cheers

Service Manager 2010 Ramp Up

Getting up to speed on new technologies is always a challenge for the busy IT Pro!   Those kind folks over at Technet have done the business again!

They have provided a ramp up learning resource. There are 8 steps which include videos and documentation. Check it out.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ff776316.aspx

TechNet Edge and the Cloud

The Cloud means different things to many people. Personally I think that its a great idea.
What I find interesting is is how are IT Pros going to provision The Cloud for their companies? How are they going to adopt the change in the way we look at managing our servers and desktops?

Intune is one really interesting topic as is BPOS, but for the moment I wanted to point out that there is some collateral available on Technet from Edge.

Have a look at http://edge.technet.com/cloud/

OCS R2 Download Page from Microsoft

Suddenly realised that I needed a file for OCS R2 and couldn't remember where I had stored it! Then I remembered that there is a list on the Technet website..

Here it is http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ocs/bb629431.aspx

Another mixed search engine

Another in the theme of mixed search engines....
Have a look at http://www.yahooglesearch.com

Thanks top Ed on my OCS course.

Communications Server “14” – Replace, Enhance or Add to your PBX & IP-PBX Systems

This is the title to a blog by Jamie Stark Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft in the CS team. 

A really top man who I had the good fortune to meet last year at TechEd in Berlin.
One of the interesting things about OCS and now CS is the interaction between Microsoft, Cisco and other vendors. CuciMoc is a product that has got a lot of people very excited. The Cisco guys are all happy as they can retain their telephony infrastructure. The bean counters are also happy as they dont need to spend more on a new infratructure. Well that might be true but what I would like to see is a true cost comparison between OCS R2 / CS 14 and an heteregenous environment.

Anyway, have a look at Jamies blog, as usual truly excellent. Follow the links to the Cucimoc article, really fascinating reading.


The blog post is here


Cheers

OCS Wave 14 - new Web Site available

Hi,

At last we can start having a look at OCS wave 14 or Communications Server "14"

Have a look at the new website but as usual, at this stage anyway, there is not much content in the way of code. But what we do have is a look at what CS 14 will look like. All in all I am pleased that we at last have somewhere to go to see what we will be getting in this much anticipated release.

http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/cs14/en/us/cs14Home.aspx

Wave 14 Powershell

Thomas Lee refered me to this site. At the moment its in its infancy but I guess will grow to be a really useful tool.

You can check it out here or if you want to copy the URL here it is as well  http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/

Bingle and Lmgtfy

Today I was told about 2 really cool utilities(?) Thanks to Mike and Steve on my SCOM course!

www.bingle.nu Check it out :-)

and then this one!

Do you get asked for links or references to sites? use this then as you answer. Make sure you follow the sytax though.
Put it into an email response as a link and wait for the response, if any!
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=***   replacing the stars with want you want to search for. For example Microsoft, Google etc.
Have fun...

Customising your Communicator client

One of the the really cool things about the next release of OCS, entitled Microsoft Communications Server "14" is the integration with Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
Developers are able to utilitise Silverlight and WPF to extend teh Commuicator experience. For example you can provide the same integration experience you are used to in Office within the Communicator client. Examples are, contact search, contact lists, presence, contact details and so on. You can also pass contextual data from you application by using the new contextual conversation API.
To see this in action have a look at this video on the PDC09 website

Microsoft Office Communications server is No More! Hello to Microsoft Communications Server

Looks like we have a name change.
So its goodbye to the Office part of OCS and hello to CS 2010?
Check out this video which demonstrates the name change. This is from Tech-Days series of videos and you can get them here
The title shows the name change rather nicely. The video is entitled  "Introduction to Microsoft Communications Server “W14″

Service Manager released but available June 1st

Service Manager was officially released at MMS. The down side is that it will only be availanle for general consumption on 1st June. However in the meantime you can download a 180 eval version from here.

We are hoping to make training available as soon as possible. I am waiting for a reply and will post training date here as soon as they become available.

Rob

OCS Stress tool

The OCS Stress Tool or as its more correctly known the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool has been out for a while but its worth a reminder that it exists.

You can test your OCS environment using the OCS Capacity Planning and Stress tool. The tool emphasises use only in a lab environment so be careful.

The documentation included in the download gives comprehensive instructions on its use.

You can download the tool from here.

But its not a supported download.

OCS 2007 R2 interop with Server 2008 R2

OCS 2007 R2 has not been supported on Windows server 2008 R2 for some time now.
But Microsoft have released two Knowledge base articles that show some progress to having OCS 2007 R2 running on the 2008 R 2 platform.
When Windows Server 2008 R2 was released many people wanted to migrate to the latest version of the OS. But the problem was that Office Communications Server 2007 R2, OCS 2007 or LCS 2005 did not work correctly after  upgrading to Windows Server 2008 R2 in a domain environment.

Microsoft have released Knowledge Base Article 982020 detailing a resolution to this problem.

Additionally there were problems on using the os as host servers for OCS 2007 R2 in a member server role.
Knowledge base article 982021 describes how to implement OCS R2  using Windows Server 2008 R2 and details the security changes, hotfixes and fixes in a step by step format, very useful.

Official MS Team Blogs

I was reading Thomas's blog and he had this really cool link to a list of all the Official MS team blogs.
Thanks Thomas

Service Manager Forums

The Service manager forums can be found here

OCS wave 14

Well I sat on the webcast on Tuesday and am still not much the wiser. Summarised below are some of the scant details that were revealed.
 
The key points were:

• There is a new communicator client,
• The client has some interesting Sharepoint integration but the details were not disclosed. I think it requires SPS 2010 but not sure.
• You can run Silverlight apps inside the client and get full access to
• everything.
• Voice now includes Branch office survivability (using local appliances)

• Enhanced E911 support for North America.
• RCC and Dual Forking are going away. They still work but it looks like being deprecated.
• An interesting part is around SIP Trunk, OCS and IP PBX being able to share presence.
• Lots of new phones - "Wave 14 is optimised for the IP telephone".

No details about the beta were forthcomming.

There is also the announcements made at VoiceCon of course and they can be found here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100324/tc_pcworld/microsofttoupdatecommunicationsserver

Microsoft not an innovator?

I found a refernce to this article in the MCT newsgroups and thought it interesting enough to share.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?pagewanted=1&em

Service Manager 2010

So finished my week on the TTT and am now trying to sort my mind into some semblance of order about what Service Manager can do for a company, and more importantly how would we be able to sell training to our customers.
I'll post more when I have organised my brain a bit more.

Six nations at Twickenham

So, much to my intense delight I have a ticket to see one of  the opening fixtures in the 2010 Six Nations and am looking forward to a great game.

I am hoping for a dry day so we can see some of good back play, none of this grinding forward play we are used to...

OCS R2 - Forest prep problem

Sometimes it is necessary to unprep a Forest,you might have made a spelling mistake for example. You cannot use the OCS setup utilty to do the Unprep. You must use the command line. It is relatively easy and I have done it myself with great success.

Microsoft have a document which details all the command line options and can be found at the link below. This link has numerous other OCS documents that can be downloaded and it is well worth doing so if you are implementing OCS 2007 R2.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E9F86F96-AA09-4DCA-9088-F64B4F01C703&displaylang=en


The syntax, taken from the Microsft documentation is as follows :

Unprepping a Forest removes prior Office Communications Server forest preparations such as objects, containers, and extended property rights.

The following command runs the ForestUnprep action. LCSCmd.exe /Forest[:] /Action:ForestUnprep 

Such as: LCSCmd.exe /Forest:contoso.com /Action:ForestUnprep 

By default, ForestUnprep will not proceed if any previously prepared child domains exist on the forest root. 

However, you can use the /Force switch to make ForestUnprep proceed; this causes all deployed Office Communications Servers to stop functioning. 


Use the following syntax and parameters to force a ForestUnprep action. LCSCmd.exe /Forest[:] /Action:ForestUnprep [/Force[:{TRUE|FALSE}]] Such as: LCSCmd.exe /Forest:contoso.com /Action:ForestUnprep /Force Hope that helps.

Fences

I came across this utility from Stardock last week. Its really cool and my desktop is tidy for the first time in years. http://www.stardock.com/products/fences

System Center Service Desk

I am attending the TTT at Microsoft Chertsey from Tuesday 26th Jan and am really looking forward to seeing this infamous product at last. Maarten Goet is presenting and I will be putting any information I can on the blog.