The OCS team has now made a Remote Connectivity Analyzer, like we know from Exchange. The tool is a great way of verifying that your remote access is configured properly.
The Office Communications Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer is a great tool for performing testing, troubleshooting, and diagnostics on OCS 2007 & OCS 2007 R2 deployments. The tool will assist you in finding answers to the before mentioned scenarios. You should use the RCA as your initial stop when attempting to troubleshoot an OCS edge server connectivity issue.
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.
The OCS Remote Connectivity Analyzer is found here. Right now the tool is still a BETA release.
Last week Microsoft released a cumulative server update for OCS 2007 R2, it contains all the OCS 2007 R2 hotfixes. So basically one installer with all OCS hotfixes, that was also needed.
Download the installer here: KB968802 – it contains a list of all the updates (October Patches) and more information about updating.
See Dennis post about it here.
A few weeks ago Microsoft released the OCS 2007 R2 Web Scheduler to web, available as download. It was originally scheduled to be part of R2 ResKit, but has now been Released To Web.
Web Scheduler is a 64-bit tool for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It provides a Web-based alternative to the add-in for the Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client for the purpose of scheduling a meeting using Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It also provides a browser-based conference management experience that includes operations such as:
- Scheduling a new Live Meeting conference or conference call.
- Viewing and modifying details of an existing conference.
- Listing all existing user schedules of a Microsoft Office conference.
- Deleting an existing conference.
- Sending an e-mail invitation to conference participants by using a configured SMTP mail server.
- Joining an existing conference.
Download it here.
Microsoft has released a new and very useful whitepaper on deploying certificates in OCS 2007.
Certificates with OCS has always been a bit tricky and documentation on OCS and certificates has always lacked, until now.
Rick Kingslan, with the help of a series of excellent people, has now created a whitepaper called “Deploying Certificates in Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2”.
This whitepaper includes links to learning resources for the basics of certificates/PKI, but more importantly very specific OCS 2007 / R2 deployment information (and command lines) and it is certainly worth a read (95 pages of good technical info).
Whitepaper: Deploying Certificates in Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2
Reference: msgoodies (thx for the info, Dennis)
Good news, Microsoft has announced a license change to the Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007 for the MSN PIC (Public IM Connectivity) license, which is needed to communicate and federate with the public MSN/Windows Live network from your OCS environment. The MSN PIC license is now free is you have an active Software Assurance (SA).
Windows Live: Customers with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Standard Client Access License or Office Communications Server 2007/ Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 Standard CAL license with active Software Assurance (SA) qualify for federation with Windows Live Messenger without additional licensing requirements. Customers who do not meet the qualifying requirement should buy the Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity license for federation with Windows Live Messenger.
AOL/Yahoo!: Federation with AOL and Yahoo! requires the Office Communications Server Public IM Connectivity (PIC) per user subscription license. The PIC License provides connectivity to both IM service providers. There are no license options for connectivity to only one provider, but administrators can choose which service provider they provision.
Get more info here:
Thanks to Jan for the info.
source: http://ocsblogs.blogspot.com/2009/07/ocs-msn-pic-for-free.html
A few months ago Microsoft released an updated version of the Office Communications Server 2007 Edge Server Deployment Guide.
This document guides you through the deployment of edge servers in your Office Communications Server 2007 topology. You typically deploy edge servers after you have deployed Office Communications Server in your internal network.If you need to communicate with users and organizations outside your internal network by using your Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 deployment, you need to deploy one or more edge servers. You install edge servers in your perimeter network (also known as screened subnet) so that users outside your organization’s firewall are authorized before they obtain access to your Office Communications Server deployment.
The information in this document includes the following:
- Guidelines to help you decide which edge servers you need and which topologies to deploy.
- Procedures to configure DNS, firewalls, a reverse proxy, and a Director.
- Steps to deploy and configure a load balancer, individual edge servers, and certificates.
- Environment configuration settings.
- Validation of edge server configuration.
Get it here.
The Resource Kit Tools for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (version 6907.0) was released in February 2009.
You can use the set of deployment, technical tools and references to complement the product documentation delivered in R2. Supported platforms to run the ResKit Tools are Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008.
Note that the tools should be used exclusively with OCS 2007 R2 (RTM) only. These are essentially the same tools shipped in the updated OCS 2007 R2 Resource Kit.
Download and more information here.
Microsoft has released the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool. The Capacity planning and load simulation toolkit is for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and can be using for planning and sizing situations together with the planning guide.
This release of the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Toolkit contains tools and documentation to simplify your hardware planning, provide you with increased knowledge and best practices for performance tuning, and improve your ability to verify the performance of your intended Office Communications Server 2007 R2 deployments.
The Capacity Planning Toolkit is intended for use by IT professionals in a test environment prior to production deployment. These tools should never be used against a live production environment.
Download it here.
