While we get this information cleaned-up, fully-documented, and stored in a more “formal” location (e.g. http://support.microsoft.com ), here are some initial Best Practices the FAST Technical Support and Escalation Teams have been successful...

Recently, the FAST Search Escalation Team has begun to see customers encountering a higher-than-expected rate of post-installation configuration/deployment failures due to IPSEC problems. As a follow-up to my previous post (see " We need to talk "), I...

Issue: After installing an Administrative node of FAST Search Server 2010, additional Non-Administrative FAST Search Server 2010 nodes cannot communicate with the Admin node. Subsequently, the non-admin nodes to fail download the deployment.xml, and...

If these steps look familiar, they’re based off a post I wrote a few years back for parsing Exchange transaction logs. Who knew 1) they’d still be relevant, 2) I’d still resort to such hacky means, and 3) others may actually find value in this ... ...

Summary: When using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2, double-clicking a Contact fails to launch a new conversation window. However, you are still able to right-click a Contact, and start an IM session by selecting “Send an Instant Message.” ...

Summary: Installation of the OCS 2007 R2 “Backend” hotfix package ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969834 ) may fail, and unfortunately, the error message presented to the Administrator isn’t entirely clear as to what the root cause is. ...

Summary: Following on the heels of success of the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (created by Shawn McGrath and Brad Hughes), Premal Gandhi (UC Support Escalation Engineer), Matthew Fresoli (Supportability Program Manager) and Jason Stine...

Summary: America Online ("AOL") uses Global Server Load Balancing ("GSLB") to maintain their SIP gateway farm. Their configuration uses sub VIPs, one for each of their two datacenters. Whenever AOL performs maintenance (new code, hardware, etc....

Summary: You may find that OCS 2007 / OCS 2007 R2's Federation and/or PIC fails against partners who do not support Entrust root certificates signed using a 2048-bit public key. For example, the "broken" certificate chain may resemble the...

Summary: Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Federation may fail against organizations that are using Lotus Sametime. Resolution: IBM has a hotfix which addresses this issue within Lotus Sametime. More Information:...

Summary: Windows Live/MSN Messenger defines both Minimum and Maximum values for Presence subscriptions. If the SUBSCRIBE method uses a value out of this range, it may result in a SIP failure. The minimum value is 3600 seconds and the MAX value is...

Update: As of June 25, 2009, the KB article 897567 has been updated, and now is accurate. Summary: As of June 13, 2009, the content of the KB article 897567 contains an inaccuracy. The last octet for the second MSN IP address was improperly transposed...

Symptoms: LCS 2005, OCS 2007, and/or OCS 2007 R2 fail to establish PIC connectivity to MSN after changes were made to the MSN infrastructure on May 9, 2009 Data: In the logs, you'll see the following data: TL_ERROR(TF_CONNECTION...

We're actively debugging this, and I'll update this post once we have this resolved. UPDATE (6pm, Eastern): We have identified the issue, and will be making changes this evening to rectify the issue. Things should be resolved by tomorrow morning. ...

Issue: Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 in conjunction with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 would intermittently fail to communicate with AOL AIM clients via PIC. Note that this would only reproduce if your OCS 2007 R2 Edge role is running...

SOLVED! Customers running Office Communicator 2007 + Office 2007: This issue is fixed by applying the hotfix referenced in KB 961752 ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961752 ), and although the KB article does not specifcally call out this...

Notification In an effort to provide enhanced capacity and service reliance, Windows Live Messenger will soon be adding additional IP addresses used for PIC/Federation traffic. Some organizations have chosen to restrict this type of traffic to specific...

Summary: You cannot connect to an Office Communications Server 2007 using an Office Communicator 2007 R2 client. Details: There are architectural changes introduced into Office Communicator 2007 R2 that are only compatible with Office Communications...

Summary: After installing or renewing your DigiCert public certificate for your OCS 2007 Edge server(s), PIC stops functioning properly (however, Remote Access still works correctly). Cause: This issue occurs if the certificate issued uses...

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ...

Summary: If your organization leverages Public Internet Connectivity (aka: "PIC") in conjunction with their Live Communication Server 2005 and/or Office Communications Server 2007 servers, you may not be able to successfully communicate with (or see...

While nobody has won the $500 bounty I placed on a set of repro steps (for a nasty bug that I’m still chasing down), that particular blog post sparked a bunch of interest. Sure, one could attribute it to the price tag I had on the bug’s head, but you...

Summary: When signing-in to Office Communications Server 2007 using cached Domain Credentials (e.g. you login to your corporate domain-joined laptop at home), Office Communicator 2007 may prompt you with an additional authentication dialog box:...

I need your help getting an issue to reproduce consistently, and the first person to give me verifiable repro steps will win *$500.00 (USD)! While this problem has reared its ugly head sporadically, I can't get a consistent repro, and therefore, have...

I'm gonna skip right over the Tier 1 & Tier 2 troubleshooting stuff, and get into the meat. When an issue lands on my plate, more often than not, it means I have to debug something (and as dry as that sounds, I truly enjoy my job). On top of that...