Scott Oseychik : OCS

Upcoming scheduled Yahoo / PIC maintenance window - November 17, 2009

Scott Oseychik — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:28:00 GMT

Summary:

Yahoo will be performing scheduled maintenance on their OCS Gateway Servers during the following maintenance window:

Confirmed Maintenance Start Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 5:00pm Pacific Time

Projected Maintenance End Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 5:30pm Pacific Time

Users may encounter sporadic access service availability, service disruption, and incorrect presence during this maintenance window.

User Action:

No action needs to be taken by your Office Communications Server administrator(s). Additionally, there will not be any further notification regarding this maintenance activity unless there is a broad disruption of service. In such cases, we will relay outage communication accordingly.

October 2009 Office Communicator/Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Cumulative Update ("CU3")

Scott Oseychik — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:04:00 GMT

Summary:

Microsoft's RTC Sustained Engineering Team just released their latest Cumulative Update (“CU3”) for Office Communicator 2007 R2 (as well as Office Communicator Phone Edition), and Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Notes:

1. As of 10/29/09, KB 968802 is in the process of being updated (should be completed within 24-48 hours), and will contain additional guidance regarding installation method options available.

2. The RTC Sustained Engineering Team will deliver the Office Communicator 2007 R2 patch via Microsoft Update. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 updates will also be posted to Microsoft Update, but due to the dependency on the backend database update in KB 969834, it will only be visible if KB 969834 has already been installed (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969834).

Updates:

KB 968802, “List of available updates for Communications Server 2007 R2”

· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802

· http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b3b02475-150c-41fa-844a-c10a517040f4

KB 975611, “Cumulative Update for Office Communications Server 2007 R2: October 2009”

· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975611

· http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b3b02475-150c-41fa-844a-c10a517040f4(server.msp)

KB 972884, “Cumulative Update for Communicator 2007 R2: Oct 2009”

· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972884

· http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=515d6dba-4c6a-48bb-a06a-d99c5742676d&displaylang=en

KB 977065, “Office Communicator 2007 R2, Phone Edition update: October 2009”

· http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977065

· http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=565595BE-6CF3-4A61-A1E4-12555749CA64&displaylang=en

Credit:

Again, big ups to the entire RTC Sustained Engineering Team! If you’re on campus, truck on down to Building 30, 2nd floor, and thank them for their hard work (plus, Ken Ewert always welcomes a good Canadian joke)!

Upcoming scheduled AOL / PIC maintenance window - October 8, 2009

Scott Oseychik — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:11:00 GMT

Summary:

America Online will be performing scheduled maintenance on their SIP Access Gateways during the following maintenance window:

Confirmed Maintenance Start Date: 10/08/2009 04:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

Projected Maintenance End Date: 10/08/2009 06:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

There may be sporadic access service availability and users may experience service disruption.

User Action:

Temporary Yahoo! PIC Maintenance: September 24, 2009 – September 25, 2009

Scott Oseychik — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:37:00 GMT

Summary:

Yahoo! will be performing maintenance that will affect their OCS gateways. The outage is scheduled to be brief, but as a precautionary measure, the following maintenance window has been declared:

Maintenance Start Date/Time: 9/24/2009, 10:00pm Pacific Time

Maintenance End Date/Time: 9/25/2009, 1:00am Pacific Time

Impact:

Office Communicator users may notice incorrect presence of their Yahoo! Contacts, or may not be able to communicate via PIC with their their Yahoo! contacts.

User Action:

Cumulative Post: All the latest Unified Communications update packages (as of August 6, 2009)

Scott Oseychik — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:15:00 GMT

Summary:

As a single point of reference, here are all of the latest updates/releases for our Unified Communications suite of products ...

Office Communicator R2, Office Communications Server R2, Conferencing Attendant R2, and Communicator Mobile R2

KB 968802, "Updates for Communications Server 2007 R2"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802

KB 969695, "Update for Communicator 2007 R2: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969695

KB 970275, "Office Communicators Server 2007 R2 Attendant hotfix rollup package: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970275

KB 972398, "Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition update: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972398

Live Meeting Console & Conferencing Add-ins for Outlook

KB 969696, "Update for Live Meeting Conferencing Add-in for Outlook: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969696

KB 969697, "Windows-based Live Meeting 2007 client update package: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969697

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat

KB 969819, "Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Hotfix"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969819

KB 969817, "Update for the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Administration Tool: July 2009"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969817

Credit:

Huge props to the entire RTC Sustained Engineering Team; if you're around Building 30, roam around the 2nd floor & thank them for their hard work!

July Updates for OCS 2007 R2, OC 2007 R2, OC 2007 R2 Attendant console, and OCPE 2007 R2

Scott Oseychik — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:50:00 GMT

The RTC Sustained Engineering Team has signed off and published the July update packages for R2!

Updates for Communications Server 2007 R2

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968802

Update for Communicator 2007 R2: July 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969695

Office Communicators Server 2007 R2 Attendant hotfix rollup package: July 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970275

Office Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition update: July 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972398

Notes:

1. The Knowledge Base articles are being published and all should be available within 24 hours.

2. All of these patches are now available via Microsoft Customer Support Services (specifically, the Unified Communications Support Team), except for the Communicator Phone Edition R2 release, which is available via web download.

3. We will also have the OC 2007 R2 on Microsoft Update today. The OCS 2007 R2 (server update) will not be on Microsoft Update due a dependency on the back-end fix that cannot be delivered via Microsoft Update.

4. KB 968802 is a rollup of all OCS 2007 R2 released patches. This KB article will be continuously updated as newer patches are released.

Announcing The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer

Scott Oseychik — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:10:00 GMT

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 (Senior Lead Program Manager) have been busy designing and writing a complimentary tool: The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer.

The tool is available at https://www.TestOcsConnectivity.com

Overview:

The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a web site for IT Administrators to validate and diagnose end-to-end Office Communications Server scenarios. The site simulates multiple Office Communications Server client access scenarios from outside the customer’s infrastructure and reports whether the test was successful. If the test fails, we inform the IT Admin exactly where in the process it failed as well as provide troubleshooting tips on resolving the issue.

In this beta version, the tool provides the following end-to-end tests:

· Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity

· Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity w/AutoDiscover

Coming Soon:

We will be expanding the Office Communications Server scenarios in the next few months to include the following:

· Deeper level of diagnostic information - MSDiagnostics header

· More detailed troubleshooting information based on MSDiagnostic header

· Additional tests

Feedback:

If you have feedback on the tool or suggestions for additional tests or improvements, please use the feedback link provided on the site.

Additional troubleshooting step when encountering PIC issues w/AOL

Scott Oseychik — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:48:00 GMT

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.), they use GSLB to take one datacenter offline while they update it and point all of the SIP traffic to the secondary datacenter.

As with all GSLB systems, DNS caching on the client side can be an issue. For example, this past week (July 16th), AOL replaced some hardware at one of their sites. When doing so, they directed all traffic to their other site around 12am EDT. It takes a maximum of 30 seconds for these changes to be reflected in DNS.

Several of our Office Communications Server customers were having issues connecting via PIC to AOL (through their SIP gateways) as late as 6:30am that morning, but that the issue resolved itself in about an hour's time. This sounds very much like DNS caching at work. That is, the users began using the system at 6:30am and continued to have issues until their DNS was refreshed.

Action Item:

While it is unclear where the caching took place (local host, ISP DNS, local network, or within the OCS topology itself), a good rule of thumb is that whenever an OCS customer is unable to reach AOL's SIP gateways via PIC, the first troubleshooting step should be to initiate a DNS flush (and that it is best to use the sip.oscar.aol.com FQDN instead of a specific IP address when connecting to AOL).

Tweaking OCS for PIC with Windows Live/MSN Messenger

Scott Oseychik — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:59:00 GMT

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 13000 seconds.

More Information:

MinPresenceSubscriptionExpiry

· Stored in the Active Directory as "msRTCSIP-MinPresenceSubscriptionTimeout"

· The default value is 1200 seconds (20 minutes)

· The minimum value for this property is 300 and the maximum value is 86340

MaxPresenceSubscriptionExpiry

· Stored in the Active Directory as "msRTCSIP-MaxPresenceSubscriptionTimeout"

· The default value is 43200 seconds (12 hours)

· The minimum value for this property is 300 and the maximum value is 86340

Workaround:

If you are encountering SIP interoperability failures via PIC against Windows Live/MSN Messenger, please modify your msRTCSIP-MaxPresenceSubscriptionTimeout and msRTCSIP-MinPresenceSubscriptionTimeout values (either via ADSIEDIT or LDP) in accordance with their guidance (min: 3600, max: 13000)

If you have installed OCS into the System container in the Active Directory, these attributes will be stored at the following location:

CN=Global Settings,CN=RTC Service,CN=Microsoft,CN=System,DC=yourdomain,DC=com

If OCS is installed in the Configuration container, you can locate these values in the Active Directory here:

CN=Global Settings,CN=RTC Service,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=yourdomain,DC=com

Update:

If for any reason the above-mentioned values get reset, they will then fall outside of the default values. Consequently, you'll need to modify the msRTCSIP-DefPresenceSubscriptionTimeout value, as without correcting this to be within range, the OCS Front-End service will not start. Additionally, you will find the following error in the Office Communications Server Event Log:

Log Name:      Office Communications Server
Source:        OCS User Services
Date:          8/20/2009 6:30:31 AM
Event ID:      30929
Task Category: (1006)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      ocs.contoso.com
Description:
Failed to process WMI event to update the User Services Global Settings because the value of Attribute1 cannot be greater than the value of Attribute2.

Attribute1: DefPresenceSubscriptionExpiry Attribute2: MaxPresenceSubscriptionExpiry
Cause: This could happen during upgrades, or in topologies with mixed 1.0 and 2.0 servers or if the Active Directory is modified directly.
Resolution:
Use MMC (or WMI) to update all the values that are out of bounds. The changes will take place without restarting the server.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
    <Provider Name="OCS User Services" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="50158">30929</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>1006</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2009-08-20T13:30:31.000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>26728</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Office Communications Server</Channel>
    <Computer>ocs.contoso.com</Computer>
    <Security />
</System>
<EventData>
    <Data>DefPresenceSubscriptionExpiry</Data>
    <Data>MaxPresenceSubscriptionExpiry</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Credit to Jason Groves & Greg Anthony for the msRTCSIP-DefPresenceSubscriptionTimeout piece

Availability announcement for latest OC R2 and OCS R2 updates via Microsoft Update, Catalog Server, and WSUS

Scott Oseychik — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:31:00 GMT

Summary:

Our Real Time Collaboration (RTC) Sustained Engineering Team has recently released two updates:

Communicator 2007 R2 hotfix rollup package: June 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972042

Update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2: June, 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972041

The Office Communicator R2 hotfix rollup package (972042) will be made available via Microsoft Update, the Microsoft Update Catalog Server, as well as Windows Software Update Services (WSUS). This release is scheduled to be available today (June 15, 2009) through these distribution channels shorly after 10:00am Pacific time.

The Office Communications Server R2 hotfix rollup package (972041) will be made available via Microsoft Update, the Microsoft Update Catalog Server, but not through Windows Software Update Services (WSUS). This release is scheduled to be available tomorrow (June 16, 2009) through these distribution channels shorly after 10:00am Pacific time.

Issue:

The update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will only be made available via Microsoft Update and the Microsoft Update Catalog Server, but not through WSUS. The reason for this absence on WSUS is due to the fact that this package contains a change to a kernel-mode binary, which will cause a prompt (thereby interrupting the automated installation process). For this reason we are not publishing this particular update to WSUS. Moving forward, we are exploring various approaches to suppress these prompts on future updates.

In the meantime, for customers who intend on installing the Update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (972041) and are using WSUS, they would need to import this from the Microsoft Update Catalog server if they want to deploy this update through Microsoft Update.

More Information:

For more information on how to import this update into WSUS using Microsoft Update, please refer to:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc708583.aspx

RESOLVED - Technical inaccuracy in KB 897567 (specific to PIC, LCS/OCS, and Windows Live/MSN Messenger)

Scott Oseychik — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:13:00 GMT

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. It’s published as 64.4.9.254, but that should be .245.

We are working on getting the Knowledge Base article updated, but in the meantime, wanted to make our customers aware of this matter sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, Microsoft cannot change the infrastructure to remedy this, as the "incorrect" IP address is already in use for another service in the Messenger cloud.

I will update this blog entry once the KB article has been updated to reflect the correct information.

Upcoming scheduled AOL / PIC maintenance window - June 4, 2009

Scott Oseychik — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:14:00 GMT

Summary:

America Online will be performing scheduled maintenance on their SIP Access Gateways during the following maintenance window:

Confirmed Maintenance Start Date: 06/04/2009 04:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

Projected Maintenance End Date: 06/04/2009 06:00 ET (24 Hour Time)

There may be sporadic access service availability and users may experience service disruption.

User Action:

RESOLVED - OCS 2007 R2 PIC fails against AOL

Scott Oseychik — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:14:00 GMT

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 Windows Server 2008 (x64); not Windows Server 2003 (x64).

Resolution:

Essentially, it boils down to tweaking the Windows Server 2008 Edge role to initially establish the SSL dialog using the TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 cipher suite.

In order to change the cipher suite order, do the following on your Windows Server 2008 (x64) Edge server:

1. Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc -> OK

2. Within the Group Policy Object Editor, expand Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Network

3. Under Network, select SSL Configuration, and then double-click on SSL Cipher Suite Order (by default, the SSL Cipher Suite Order is set to "Not Configured")

4. Select the “Enabled” radio button, and in the in the SSL Cipher Suites text box, copy the entire string into Notepad. It should look like the following:

TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA,TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5,SSL_CK_RC4_128_WITH_MD5,SSL_CK_DES_192_EDE3_CBC_WITH_MD5,TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_MD5,TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA

5. The objective here is to move TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5 to be a the front of the list. So, in your Notepad document, find TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5, cut it, navigate to the beginning of your notepad document, and paste TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5. The new order should look like the following:

TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA,TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P256,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P384,TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA_P521,TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA,TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA,TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA,SSL_CK_RC4_128_WITH_MD5,SSL_CK_DES_192_EDE3_CBC_WITH_MD5,TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_MD5,TLS_RSA_WITH_NULL_SHA

6. Paste the newly-formatted string back into the text field in the GPO Editor, click OK, then restart your Windows Server 2008 (x64) Edge server for these changes to take effect.

We have verified (and re-verified) these steps work, and can now successfully communicate with AOL AIM clients using Office Communicator 2007 R2 via PIC.

Additional Windows Live Messenger PIC/Federation IP Addresses

Scott Oseychik — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:04:00 GMT

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 IP addresses, as referenced in Microsoft KB 897567 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897567). With this in mind we want to give you advanced notice of our intended change if you have configured your enterprise network in this manner.

Please ensure your enterprise firewall configuration is updated with the full list of Windows Live Messenger addresses below on or before Friday, May 8, 2009. Windows Live Messenger will NOT enable any of the additional IP addresses until on or after May 9th(Pacific Time) to ensure your services will not be disrupted by this change.

IP address for Windows Live Messenger PIC/Federation:

65.54.227.249

64.4.9.181

64.4.9.245

65.54.52.53

65.54.52.245

For more information please reference Microsoft KB 897567, or for further assistance, please engage Microsoft Customer Support Services via http://support.microsoft.com.