I was checking on a PBX model/version with a customer when I found that we increased the amount of gateways that support OCS. We started with Audiocodes, Dialogics, and Quintum. Now we have a plethora of vendors that have gone through the open interoperability program including: Ferrari, Vegastream, Nortel, NEC, Nuera, Cisco, and AcuLab. For a full up-to-date list check this out: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb735838.aspx#gateways1
What phones work with OCS 2007? Here’s a quick list with partner contact info:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb970310.aspx
This is an older topic but one that I’ve run across recently with education customers. I’m planning to migrate from Novell to Microsoft and I have GroupWise. What are my options?
Well, we deprecated our migration tools when we launched Exchange 2007. So we don’t have a tool to go directly from GroupWise to Exchange 2007. That being said you can use Exchange 2003 to migrate mail/calendar from GroupWise to Exchange. Then you can move the mailbox from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 easily.
If co-existence is needed you need to have an Exchange 2003 in your org to provide free/busy connectivity with GroupWise. The free/busy connector in 2003 doesn’t support HTML over the connector. So a choice needs to be made between support for HTML or free/busy you can’t support both options. As you can see HTML can be a big impact on your email migration.
Size of your migration will be a deciding factor on how you do your migration. The smaller migrations can be done quickly and don’t require coexistence. The larger ones do need to have a coexist period which requires free/busy, directory sync, and mailflow. This is all outlined in the Exchange interop and migration guide - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997840(EXCHG.65).aspx
If coexistence is not needed there are options to migrate directly to Exchange 2007. Check out the Quest tools. Quest acquired the Wingra toolset which included the Groupwise Migrator for Exchange. It converts users’ mail, calendars, tasks, personal address books and frequent contacts and stores them on users’ new mailboxes on Exchange server. The big option they offer is migration of Groupwise archives to psts’. To find out more check this out: http://www.quest.com/groupwise-migrator-for-exchange/
All – we had a very good call yesterday with our customers on Unified Communications. The goal of the UC & Mobility Roundtable Gathering is to build a forum where educators can share best practices with one another around Unified Communications and mobility:
The audience for the UC & Mobility Roundtable are educators, instructional leaders and IT Managers who have an interest in Unified Communications and Windows Mobile solutions where they can have a platform to share with other educators in a customer lead group.
Each meeting will have an update from Microsoft, a guest speaker then 30 minutes to share best practices and ideas on what is working in schools today. Meeting times are once per quarter by Live Meeting and once a year in person meeting at notable conference (NECC, Educause or Voice Con).
To participate please contact Bill Hagen @ bhagen@microsoft.com.
I hate to even say it. Customers still ask for it but alot of implementations are still done via MAPI calls to individual mailboxes. This can give you a very large backup window. With Exchange 2003 and 2007 you can use the Recovery Storage Group. In Exchange 2007 this can be done via shell:
Restore-Mailbox –identity <user_name> –rsgdatabase <Server_Name>\<RSG_Name>\<Database_Name>
More info here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124357.aspx , http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997694(EXCHG.80).aspx
You can also filter/Merge mailbox with restore-mailbox. This is great for compliance measures. You filter on content,date(s), etc. and move to a new mailbox for review.
I received some questions on Single Copy Clustering for Exchange 2007 that I wanted to share with everyone.
1. In SCC with geocluster the cluster mailbox server name is maintained by IP address is not. IP address and DNS propagation are essential in the geocluster. We recommend TTL for the host record be a value of 10 minutes.
2. Configure for missed cluster heartbeats. Set for all nodes for 10 missed heartbeats. This setting corresponds to 12 seconds. How to Configure the Cluster Networks for a Single Copy Cluster.
3. Quorum is set with Node Majority with Disk Witness. This is described in setting up Cluster with SCC. How to Configure the Node and Disk Majority Quorum.
4. Installing on Windows 2008 How to Install the Active Clustered Mailbox Role in a Single Copy Cluster on Windows Server 2008.
5. One issue with solution is on creating new mailboxes on second mailbox server with proxy generator DLL issues:
In an SCC that contains multiple clustered mailbox servers, there is a known issue where you might not be able to create new mailboxes on the second and any subsequent clustered mailbox server that was installed in the failover cluster. When this issue occurs, attempts to create a new mailbox on the second or subsequent clustered mailbox server in the cluster will fail with the following error message: "A proxy generator DLL on server FQDN.serverName could not be found or failed to initialize. Proxy addresses for the current recipient cannot be calculated. Please ensure that all proxy address generator DLLs have been installed on the target server." You can resolve this issue by creating the new mailbox on another Mailbox server, and then moving that mailbox to the second or subsequent clustered mailbox server in the cluster. You can also resolve this issue by creating a Microsoft MTA object in Active Directory for the clustered mailbox server. For detailed steps, see How to Enable Mailbox Creation on the Second or Successive Clustered Mailbox Server of an Exchange 2007 Single Copy Cluster.
Installing SCC on Windows 2008 - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb629581(EXCHG.80).aspx
In education we have a very small team to support our customers. Your team consist of Bill Hagen, Mark Garcia, and Greg Katz. I’ve setup this blog to detail findings, review Q&A, and provide our customers with details on Unified Communications in Education. We have two other sites that we have posted to but will be using this moving forward.