Byron Spurlock's Blog - LCS, OCS, & VOIP Insight

Validation Wizard - Configuration Checker

The deployment validation wizard can really be broken up into three main parts.  Those parts are as follows: Configuration Checker, Connectivity Checker, and the SIP Logon Checker. The one that we will tackle today is the "Configuration Checker".

The Configuration Checker is a checker that can be run from the validation wizard.  Now the interesting part about the configuration checker is it can take less than 5 mins to run and tell you what is and what is not configured in your OCS 2007 enviroment. 

The ideal time to run the configuration checker is through out your deployment process with OCS.  Once you deployed your first server for OCS go ahead and take part of running the validation wizard. So lets say for example you deployed the Standard Edition server; go ahead after setup and run the configuration checker in the validation wizard. 

What this will tell you is what has been configured and what has not been.  The idea is to get use to running the checker and looking at the results. 

Now to reading the results, the important thing I would say is to understand the "red" and "amber" indicators of results.  What I have come across are results that are not actaully saying something is wrong, but rather warning messages.  The messages that are "amber" are basically letting you know that somethings are not configured and this could be done for a reason.

Now the results from the configuration checker that are in "red" indicate more than likely that something is wrong and may not be working.  This is something to address as soon as possible in your configuration.

To gain practice at looking at the results and not being overwhemled I would look at the configuraiton checker results alone and just scroll down and see what it has to offer.

The item that we will take a look at next is my personal favorite the "connectivity checker".

Validation Wizard - Overview

With OCS 2007 there are many ways now to see if your deployment is going sound.  One of those methods I will discuss with you is the Validation Wizard.  Now to those that are familiar with LCS 2005,  you should be glad that we now have something to validate if what we are doing is right or not.

The validation wizard with OCS 2007 can be used when deploying your Standard or Enterprise edition servers.  One of the nice things with the validation wizard is that have the ability to check server configuration, server connectivity, and SIP Logon. I will discuss these later in more depth in another blog entry. 

Scenarios the validation wizard can be used is when you first installed your Standard or Enterprise edition server(s).  One of the things that people run into all the time is getting too far into their installation and not knowing that something is not configured correctly.  I have personally used the validation wizard through out my whole deployment process. 

In a later blogs we will jump into each of the options that the validation wizard has for us to look at in more depth.

Console Logger Components Defined!

The following table represents the options that are available once you in the console logger.  The console logger is a tool used for troubleshooting OCS.

DVT Step by Step

So for those who have seen the blog posting about the DVT (Deployment Validation Wizard) or have seen my webcast about Detecting Audio Quality Issues with OCS 2007, have pinged me about how to deploy it.  More specifically about it appearing "Offline" and how to resolve it. 

 So the below steps are how I setup the DVT Answering Agent, the steps are pretty much step by step. I use two machines in my example and those are DC1 that contains my domain Controller and will act as the machine that will host the AAT.  And  I have my machine OCS-STD will contains my OCS Standard Edition Server and will act as the host to my organizer.

1. Create account for ogranizer agent such as AATagent
2. Create account for DVT agent such as DVT
3. Give both accounts domain admin rights ( technically you dont have to give them these rights)
4. Confirm that each account has an email address
5. Enable both accounts for OCS
6. On the OCS-STD server run setup of DVT
1. Run setup of Organizer
2. During install of organizer select AATagent account you created earlier

1. Configuring the Organizer menu should look like the following:
1. SIP URL should be AATagent@litwareinc.com
2. Enable check box for Use default credentials
3. Select Automatic Configuration
4. Enable TLS
5. Click OK

2. Go to Services
3. Find OCS DVT agent Service
4. Change account to log on with AATagent
5. Restart service when complete

1. On DC1 install the agent
2. Run setup of the agent
1. During install chose account that you created for the agent as below
2. Agent configuration menu should look like the following:
3. SIP URI should be DVT@litwareinc.com
4. Enable Use Default Credentials
5. Select Manual Configuration
1. Server URI = FQDN of server
2. Server Port = 5061
3. Enable TLS
4. Agent Type = select Answering Agent
6. Go to Services and configure OCS Service account to be DVT
1. Restart service
7. Log on to communicator as DVT account; then log off
8. Log onto another MOC as someone else and add DVT to contact list
1. Should be online.

WEBCAST: ALL ABOUT DMZ AND EDGE SERVERS IN COMMUNICATIONS SERVER 2007

I just delivered a webcast about edge servers in the perimeter network; you can find the webcast at the link below...

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032372435&role=attend&pw=2A9BDB1F

 I reference the different scenarios in which to use the edge servers and go through the topologies that are available.

Edge Topologies 4 of 4

So I have deviated from this session for quite a while now, not on purpose but for there where other areas that just crossed my mind that I wanted to chat about.  Now back to the last section of the Remote Access Edge Topologies. 

Where we left off was talking about the 3rd topology which was the Scaled - Single Site Topology.  Now lets talk about the 4th topology for the Edge servers; the good thing is you recall the 3rd topology then the 4th topology is almost just like it in the since that now we are concentrating on the remote site besides the main data center.  Now the premise here is that the remote site that is not the datacenter has a permiter network just like the main data center.  For our example we are going to say the Main Data Center is in Chicago and the second data center is in Denver.  Chicago has a pool and a permiter network and Denver has a pool and a perimeter network as well.

 Chicago has a Single - Site Topology which consist of 1 AV Edge and 1 Colloated AE \ WC Edge.  Now comes the 4th Edge Topology setup; Denver has in the perimeter network 2 servers, and they are the WC Edge and the AV Edge.  Notice that we didnt include AE for the Denver location for we can only have a single Geographic location of AE servers.  Meaning one data center can contain the AE roles leveraging a single SRV record.  So that single external SRV record that we would have external users use such as _SIP._TLS.<domain> can not be supported with multiple domain names for a single SRV record and can only go to a single location of edge servers as well,

 Now, I clearly didn't say that you could not have multiple AE Servers in different perimeter networks, but rather haveing them point to the same SRV record is not supported today for OCS 2007.  So the Denver location would have 2 servers in the perimeter network the WC Edge and the AV Edge.  This is not a problem by having a single location for the AE servers for the AE servers are only proxing external SIP traffic and organizing the SIP channel for VOIP calls.  The AE does not do any authentication for the internal director, SE, or Pool will do that. 

The traffic that we pass through the AE is bursty in nature and is not a constant stream such as the media or conferncing from the other roles. So nowt that I have covered the last section of the Edge Topologies we will move on to something else soon that takes a series of post to get the message out there. 

I will be doing a webcast soon on the Edge Server Topologies of OCS, dont know that date as of yet, but tune into the site again and I will be posting a link to all the remaining OCS 2007 webcast that I will be delivering on.

OCS 2007 Resource Kit Tools

A very cool webcast has just been done, its OCS 2007 Resource Kit Tools.  This is level 200 webcast containing information about the tools that OCS 2007 have available from the Resource Kit Tools install.  I have been asked quite a bit about what tools are there and how to use some of them.  This sort of topic would have taken forever to blog about, so I was able to work this into the OCS webcast series. 

I talk about tools such as:

• RouteHelper
• Snooper
• Bulk User Import
• Database Analyzer
•  LCSSync

These are just some of the tools that I talk about; in addition to the lecture I give some demos of a few of the tools in action. If you want to tune in the link is where you can get the on demand webcast for later viewing.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032372046&Culture=en-US

Have a good one.

Deployment Validation Tool Webcast

Last week I did a webcast regarding the Deployment Validation Tool (DVT).  This was a much needed webcast that had to be delivered for I talked about this tool at quite a few Voice Ignite sessions.  Now interesting thing about this webcast is that I dont talk about the intall but rather I dive into the configurations of the DVT and in's and out's of configuring it. 

Also I discuss the Auto Answering Agent which is a cool tool as well that comes with the Deployment Validation Suite.  I even give a demo of how it works.

The following link will direct you to the site to catch the webcast.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032372044&Culture=en-US

OCS Migrations Lessons Learned

Just completed another webcast today on OCS 2007 Migrations Lesson Learned and the link can be found here

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032372042&Culture=en-US.  Now this webcast talks about how to migration from LCS 2005 SP1 to OCS 2007; in addition we talk about some of the finer points of the migration with regards to what we learned from previous migrations.

The next webcast will be next where we will take a look at Deployment Validation Tool.