Byron Spurlock's Blog - OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2 & VOIP Insights : Byrons

Validation Wizard - Overview

Byrons — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:17:00 GMT

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.

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

Byrons — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:19:00 GMT

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.

Backing up Pool and Global OCS Configurations

Byrons — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:06:00 GMT

Backing up your OCS server and pool configurations are only a portion of a good recovery or disaster recovery (DR) plan. In todays blog I will concentrate more on the side of backing up your pool settings. Backing up your pool configs can defintely help with the recovery of your OCS infrastructure in the case of a recovery, but by all means its not the end all be all for a good DR plan.

So lets get into some nuts and bolts...

The LCSCmd.exe command-line tool can be used to back up global-level settings, pool-level settings, and computer-level settings.

The LCSCmd.exe tool is automatically installed when Office Communications Server 2007 is installed. This tool is also available on any computer
where Office Communications Server 2007 Admins tools is installed.

Backing up the settings needed to restore Office Communications Server 2007 requires backing up the following:

Global-level and pool-level settings. This requires the following:

For a Standard Edition server environment, back up these settings on only one Standard Edition server.

For an Enterprise pool, back up these settings on only one front-end server.

Computer-level (machine-level) settings. Back up these settings on each Office Communications Server 2007 server in your deployment.

(The below instructions are pretty much step by step)

1. Log on to a Standard Edition server or a front-end server in an Enterprise pool, or to a separate computer on which Office Communications Server 2007 administrative tools have been installee, with an account that has RTCUniversalReadOnlyAdmins (at least), as well as write permissions for the
folder to which settings are to be backed up.

2. Open a command prompt. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. (maybe a little too detailed there)

3. At the command prompt, change to the directory containing the LCSCmd.exe tool (by default, <drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007).

4. To export both levels of settings (global and pool), do one of the following:

To export global-level and pool-level settings in an Enterprise pool to a single configuration file (.xml file), type the following command:
lcscmd /config /action:export /level:global,pool /configfile: <drive>:\<path>\<filename>.xml /poolname:[name of pool for which settings are to be exported]

To export global-level and pool-level settings for a Standard Edition server to a single configuration file (.xml file), type the following command:
lcscmd /config /action:export /level:global,pool / configfile:<drive>:\<path>\<filename>.xml /poolname

Wrap Up: Hopefull this answers some questions in regards to "Can I backup my pool or global settings in OCS 2007 in case a disaster strikes?" I will provide more material about DR in the coming weeks\months, but really wanted to address some points that have been coming recently.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit Sample Chapters

Byrons — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:55:00 GMT

In the works is a OCS 2007 resource kit book developed by the UC group at Microsoft. The book is still in progress however there are some sample chapters that are available to take a look at.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=407a3e40-350a-4e3d-b60e-c9505668b231&DisplayLang=en