OCS 2007 Standard Edition - 10 insights from the field

jro — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:27:00 GMT

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.

Onsighting Microsoft products and technologies : VPC 2007

OCS 2007 Standard Edition - 10 insights from the field