Archive for August, 2007

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What’s Behind the Windows Server 2008 Delay?

Posted by admin

August 31, 2007

Microsoft published almost no details earlier this week with its announcement that Windows Server 2008’s release to manufacturing date had slipped.

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OCS 2007 on a 64-bit server

Posted by jro

August 30, 2007

..and missing those fancy ADUC (Active Directory Users and Computers) controls for enabling users to your pool? Fear not, just run this to get them visible: mmc /32 dsa.msc. Yeah, I’m a keyboard junkie amongst other vices, but this was something I really needed to troubleshoot for a sec. It seems every day is a learning day!

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OCS 2007 Standard Edition - 10 insights from the field

Posted by jro

August 30, 2007

I, for one, have been struggling a bit when it comes down to understanding what’s happening with OCS 2007 (Office Communications Server 2007, RTM’d some time ago). Having played with LCS 2005 (Live Communications Server 2005) quite a bit, I’ve been eagerly waiting for the first stabile betas and release candidates of its successor.

Here is my attempt to explain OCS 2007 (Standard Edition) in 10 insights from the field:

10. Can be deployed with SQL Express on the same box - scales a bit poorer but is easier to set up for demo/trial/customer case environments. This is what I use in my daily work

9. Office Communicator 2.0, Office Communicator Mobile 2.0, Microsoft Tanjay/Catalina phones and Communicator Web Access are all good ways of using OCS. Most people will be happy with MOC (Microsoft Office Communicator 2.0), yet one should really take a look at the mobile client for Windows Mobile 5/6 - it’s hugely useful when out of the office. Remember to export your cert chain for this to work.

8. It all boils down to two main support vehicles - Active Directory and Certificate Services. Learn these, and use these for debugging (via the excellent OCS Logging Tool running with Powershell)

7. Start your OCS 2007 deployment with the central server (i.e. the first box that’s going to host your IM/Presence roles of OCS), and go for the Edge Services last. They are always the hardest to set up, and often require quite a lot of troubleshooting with certificate issues.

6. If possible, avoid using third-party certificates. The process is a hassle, and not really worth the headaches.

5. Need to build a demokit/playground for OCS 2007? Here’s my recommendation: Use whatever virtualization solution you prefer (read: Virtual PC 2007), and set up 3 virtual servers:

Active Directory + Certificate Services -server

OCS 2007 Standard (all core roles) + Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging

OCS 2007 Standard (Edge/Mediation/CWA)

In addition use the host as a client for

Roundtable

SIP 2.0-phones (such as Cisco, Nokia and Nortel)

Microsoft Tanjay/Catalina-phones

Office Communicator

Outlook 2007 for voice mailbox access

VoIP Gateway (such as AudioCodes and Dialogic)

Make sure to enable IVT (Intel Virtualisation Technology) if your host supports that, and make that VPC 2007 is configured to use it.

4. Exchange 2007 UM (Unified Messaging) is easy to configure, but has a crappy interface for doing that. Just go out of your comfort zone for a sec, and use the command-line tools to do it. It’s worth it.

3. OCS 2007 Guides are essential - Planning Guide is truly good, yet a few topics are not really described in detail, so prepare for some research during deployment

2. Check, doublecheck, triplecheck and have someone else check that your DNS zones and records are properly set up. “whoops, I missed the underscore” is a quite common problem. Oh yeah, Netbios-traffic (port 135/TCP) and AD RPC-traffic (ports 1025, 1026/TCP and UDP) are needed.

1. OCS 2007 is all about infrastructure! the rest is just persistence.

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Dogfooding: Windows Live OneCare 2.0 beta

Posted by jro

August 30, 2007

One of the ‘perks’ at Microsoft is the ability to dogfood things - i.e. installing every piece of alpha, beta, gamma and whatnot version of software that interests you. And then observing if your laptop still boots, or not.

I was asked recently “What’s a good antivirus/antispyware software for a small company?”. My obvious answer, which came out in 2 seconds, was of course “Forefront products!”, but remembering this company had mostly laptops, I chose to recommend/insinuate that Windows Live OneCare 2.0 (http://get.live.com/) might be worth looking at. I’ve had the habit of skipping most of Microsoft’s consumer products because I don’t have the need for them personally.

Installation of OneCare 2.0 beta is fairly straightforward - setup -> next -> next -> restart. Since I already had another antivirus on my laptop I disabled that before restarting - just to avoid any additional problems.

After reboot OneCare shows a panel with a risk-factor of “good”. Great!

Next, one needs to set up subscription - pay something to get updates. Long story short, I’m not only $49,95 poorer but my subscription doesn’t work. It’s good that the billing process works, yet I didn’t receive the key to actually activate my subscription.

Bypassing this slight annoyance, next I need to connect my OneCare to other PC’s in my circle. Obviously since I’m running a beta software I don’t need to connect this anywhere - and I couldn’t find a way to disable the nagging about connecting this machine URGENTLY to my OneCare circle. No thanks.

Finally, I’ve got the third urgent (!) message of backing up my PC. Since my subscription is not valid (yet, anyway) I can’t use online backup. I do however have a 2 GB memory stick (with a fancy Vista-sticker, which makes it faster) that I tried to use as a backup media. After carefully selecting which files to backup, I get “Unknown error” when trying to schedule or initiate the backup.

I do have protection now, but with 3 red warnings throughout the OneCare console, and “YOU ARE AT RISK” everywhere. I guess I’m still not ready for consumer products.

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MOSS 2007 and SPS 2003/SPS 2001 migration tools public release

Posted by jro

August 29, 2007

I just got a note that the following migration tools for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (SPS) have been released via CodePlex: