January, 2009

I had a chance to review an upcoming OCS 2007 R2 architecture planning document and I have summarized some of the 350 page document below:

R2 Topology options

Similar to the current release of OCS there are three topologies to consider for your school’s R2 deployment:

• Office Communications Server Enterprise Edition in a consolidated configuration.

This topology is recommended for most schools of any size. It provides performance, high availability, and scalability.

• Office Communications Server Standard Edition.

This topology is for small or midsize deployments, such as branch and pilot deployments, that do not have high availability and performance requirements.

• Office Communications Server Enterprise Edition in an expanded configuration

The Enterprise Edition in an expanded configuration continues to be supported in Office Communications Server 2007 R2. However, the recommended configuration in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 is the consolidated configuration listed as the first option. The primary advantage offered by the expanded configuration in Office Communications Server 2007 was its ability to scale in very large deployments. In Office Communications Server 2007 R2, the limitations for scaling have been removed from the consolidated configuration, making it the preferred solution both in terms of scaling and simplified administration. 

Below is a reference architecture OCS Enterprise Edition consolidated deployment which most schools might pattern if they deploy all the feature sets in R2:

As you notice above with the 64-bit architecture in R2, you can now effectively scale OCS even with a consolidated Edge and FE servers approach.

What are some of the new roles/servers in R2?

Running on your internal network at your school:

· Front End Server

Note:

IM Conferencing Server, Telephony Conferencing Server, are automatically installed with a Front End Server.

· Back-End Database

SQL 2008 or SQL 2005 supported

· A/V Conferencing Server

· Web Conferencing Server

· Application Server (New in R2)

· Four new unified communication applications:

· Conferencing Attendant

· Conferencing Announcement Service

· Outside Voice Control

· Response Group Service

· Director

· Mediation Server

· Archiving Server

· Monitoring Server (New in R2)

QoE and CDR consolidated on one server now

· Communicator Web Access

· Web Components Server (runs Internet Information Services, or IIS)

· Group Chat Server (New in R2)

Do each of these OCS R2 roles/server have to run stand alone?:

The good news is now that R2 is 64-bit only the answer is no and I would imagine most schools would run almost all of these roles on a few Front End servers in a pool and then just add more servers to the Front End pool as demand increases.

If you notice in the Enterprise consolidated reference architecture above there are only a few server roles broken out such as SQL, director, CWA, group chat server, monitoring, archiving and everything else is running on the Front End servers.

Is there a list of what OCS server roles I can and can’t run together?:

Yes, here is a table from the newly released documentation:

What roles do I deploy into my school’s perimeter network (DMZ)?:

Access Edge service

Validates and forwards SIP signaling traffic between internal and external users.

A/V Edge service

Enables audio and video conferencing, desktop sharing, and audio/video (A/V) peer-to-peer communications with external users who are equipped with a supported client.

Web Conferencing Edge

Service enables external users to participate in conferences that are hosted by an internal Web Conferencing Server.

 

Do my Edge roles have to run standalone?:

Again, the good news is no with the 64-bit only scalability of R2. The requirement for the A/V Edge role having to be a separate dedicated server has gone away as well.

Summary:

I hope this provides you a first look at R2 architecture considerations. In my next few blog posts I will talk about the R2 prerequisites, R2 deployment considerations, and migration from OCS RTM to R2.

With R2 on the horizon (Feb. 3rd), I figured you should know about some of the things to prepare for deploying R2.

Run the OCS Best Practice Analyzer

If you have OCS 2007 today, you should run the OCS BPA to get a snapshot of your OCS environment.  Fix any issues identified prior to rolling out R2 to help ensure a smoother transition to R2.

Do you have any 64-bit domain controllers?

If the answer is yes, you will have an easier time with OCS R2 prep work as well as with any Exchange 2007 installation.

If the answer is no, you may consider installing a 64-bit DC/GC since you can consolidate more DCs and the ratios of DC/GCs for things like Exchange improve (1 DC:8 cores of Exchange mailbox vs 1:4 with 32-bit DCs).

The OCS R2 Prep wizard only preps 64-bit Domain controllers so if you have 32-bit DCs you will need to run the command line LDIFDE tool to modify the schema from the command line.

Sample LDIFDE run on a 32-bit DC:

ldifde –i –v –k –s DC1 –f schema.ldf –c DC=X “DC=contoso,DC=com” –b Administrator password

What flavors of Active Directory work with OCS R2?

· All global catalog servers in the forest where you deploy Office Communications Server run Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 R2, or Windows Server 2008.

· All domains in which you deploy Office Communications Server are raised to a domain functional level of Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008. You cannot deploy Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a Microsoft Windows 2000 mixed, Windows 2000 native, or Windows 2003 interim domain.

· The forest in which you deploy Office Communications Server is raised to a forest functional level of Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008. You cannot deploy Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a Windows 2000 mixed, Windows 2000 native, or Windows 2003 interim forest.

Prep the Schema

R2 requires an AD schema extension so you, or someone with rights, will need schema administrator rights to deploy R2. Obviously, this is something that needs to be planned, approved, etc.

Run the R2 schema prep off hours as any schema modification forces a full global catalog replication (e.g. a 1GB DIT file means 1GB of AD data replicated across all GCs in your environment).

Prep the Forest

You also need to Forest prep to create the global settings and universal groups specific to OCS R2. This requires Enterprise admin rights to perform.

Prep the Domain

Finally, for each domain where you will host OCS users you will need to prepare the AD domain to configure OCS rights, etc. This requires domain admin rights to perform.

What else?

You should certainly be thinking about consolidated Edge and Front End architectures for most roles in addition to other functionality you may have to plan for such as Group Chat server, audio conferencing, response groups, etc.

Note: Some of this information was taken from the upcoming OCS R2 Deployment whitepaper.

In my next blog, I will talk about how to get from OCS RTM to OCS R2.

Entourage has long been critized with it's access to exchange. I remember getting questions about RPC over HTTPS and whether or not Entourage uses MAPI. Well it didn't and still doesn't. It did however utilize WebDAV to provide a connection to Exchange. The Exchange team has de-emphasized WebDAV in Exchange 2007 and reduced it's footprint. Now we are removing another barrier and moving our Apple users from WebDAV to Exchange Web Services (EWS).

EWS provides the Entourage users with increased functionality including:

• Tasks, Notes, and Categories now sync with the Exchange Server     
• Resolving names against the Global Address List now works via EWS/HTTP. This means you no longer need to be connected to your corporate network via VPN to resolve names when addressing an e-mail or meeting invitation     
• Improved Autodiscover. In Entourage for Exchange Web Services Beta, the Autodiscover service keeps user account settings up-to-date after the account setup. 
      • It runs in the background every time that you start Entourage. 
      • It also runs at a server-defined interval, typically every hour, to make sure that the Exchange Server settings are always kept up-to-date.

For more info on the Exchange services beta and to apply for the beta: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/itpros/entourage-ews.mspx

A video was published today by our Exchange team discussing our upcoming release of Exchange 14 here.

The key message being:

Exchange 14 represents a new generation of Microsoft server technology that is designed, built and tested from the ground up for Software+Services.

Q & A provided:

Q: When will you release the next version of Exchange?

A: You will hear more from us about timing and investment areas later this quarter.

Q: I haven’t heard anything about Outlook or Office availability? When can we expect to hear from Office?

A: The Office team also is actively building and testing the next version of Office. At this point, we haven’t disclosed timing.

Exchange 14 in Education

We are currently hosting over 3.5 million students in production today on Exchange 14 beta code via our cloud based Exchange Labs offering so we are getting tremendous feedback on improving Exchange 14 with relation to the Education space.

We also have many schools interested in Exchange 14 for both on premise and online right now and they are participating in our Rapid Deployment Program where they get an early look at our code, and deploy a subset of mailboxes on this platform pre-release. Their feedback from a Education point of view will be extremely valuable.

64-bit only

As you know, R2 is moving to a 64-bit only platform to achieve greater scalability. 32-bit versions of OCS 2007 R2 will no longer be supported in production. This lines up with Exchange and other products moving this direction.

What OS can I run R2 on?

All roles of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Enterprise Edition require one of the following operating systems:

· The 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard, or the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise

· The 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard with Service Pack 2 (SP2), or the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise with SP2

· The 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2003 Standard with SP2, or the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise with SP2

What version of SQL can I run R2 on?

The following list of supported database management systems applies to the Office Communications Server Back-End Database and to the Archiving, Monitoring, and Group Chat databases:

· Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (32-bit or 64-bit edition)

· Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with SP2 (32-bit or 64-bit edition)

What type of reference HW is required for R2?

The following tables describe the hardware requirements for an Enterprise pool that has 100,000 endpoints, includes all Office Communications Server functionality, and has eight Front End Servers.

Table 1. Enterprise Edition, Front-End Server

If you extrapolate this information: 1 OCS FE server with all OCS functionality will ballpark around 12,500 endpoints so a typical school district/campus size, from what I have sampled, for faculty and staff two servers would be sufficient with redundancy.

The requirements in the following table apply to the Back-End Database and to Monitoring, Archiving, Group Chat, and Compliance databases.

Table 2. Enterprise Edition, Back-End Database

Enterprise Edition Consolidated, Edge Server

Mediation Server

Communicator Web Access

For Standard only deployments:

Standard Edition

Note: All of this information taken from the upcoming OCS architecture documentation

P.S. Don’t forget to join our R2 virtual launch on February 3 as we have over 6,700 customers signed up already. It will also be translated in 11 languages.

I have a customer that is looking at a full site recovery with OCS. They have one Enterprise Pool in one location and another Enterprise Pool in a secondary location. The first thing that is required for the backup is to understand what is needed for full recovery. Configuration files for FE, Access Edge, and the Database itself should be in the backup for OCS. Using LCSCMD.EXE from the ResKit you can back up the configfiles.

Examples:

lcscmd /config /action:export /level:machine /configfile:c:\backup\{name of FE Server}-Serversettings.xml /fqdn:[fqdn of FE server]

lcscmd /config /action:export /level:machine /configfile:c:\backup\{name of mediation server}-serversettings.xml /fqdn:[fqdn of mediation server]

lcscmd /config /action:export /level:global,pool /configfile:c:\backup\{poolname}-globalandpool.xml /poolname:[poolname]

note (you could split up the last cmd to do global first then pool settings).

also do the Access Edge. This should be backed up when there are changes to the access edge. It's backup can be less frequent then the above backups.

lcscmd /config/action:export /level:machine /configfile:c:\backup\serversettings.xml/fqdn:

Backup of the SQL Databases can be done with traditional backup tools. You should backup rtc, rtcconfig, and rtcdyn. RTC database stores persistent user data, including contact lists, access control information, and static conferencing information. The RTCDYN database stores transient conference information, such as the up-to-date participant list and the roles of participants, subscription information, conference lock, etc.

restore the above with

lcscmd /config /action:import

On the secondary site deploy OCS using the same pool name, domain, pool FQDN, same SQL Name, internal and external web farm FQDNs, Meeting Content, Meeting Metadata, and ABS share location. Move or restore the databases.

lcscmd /forest[:<forest fqdn>]/action:UpdatePoolBackend /Poolname:<pool name> /poolbe:<pool backend server FQDN\SQL Instance name>

then restore the database and run lcscmd with updatepoolbackend switch.

Use automation tools to automate your business process.

One of my customers was looking for guidance.

'From the Cisco Guidance"...The Cisco ACE configuration required to support Office Communications Server 2007 is not complicated and can be easily deployed.

•Layer 3 Virtual IP (VIP) can be used to simplify load balancing configuration. OCS uses many different protocols to support various features of the product. The hardware load balancer configuration can be simplified by configuring the virtual IP address on the load balancer to listen on all IP ports and utilize Access Control Lists (ACLs) to restrict traffic to the VIP.

•The ACE Source Network Access Translation (SNAT) feature for server-initiated connections can be used to simplify Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 deployments and traffic analysis. For simplicity, Microsoft recommends using source NAT for all pool traffic; however, further Cisco and Microsoft testing found it is only necessary to use source NAT for server-initiated traffic destined for VIP, thus saving resources. Cisco ACE supports this type of SNAT, which dramatically decreases the size of the NAT translation table and preserves source IP addresses of external client connections, which can be useful in troubleshooting and log file analysis.

Here's the link: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Verticals/ansmsocs.html

One of our customers asked me about view content of IM with OCS. Can this be done or do we need 3rd party. The good thing is we don't need a 3rd party tool but it is an administrator toolset. I'm hoping for more of a RBAC method in the future (my wishlist!!). After deploying the OCS Archiving roll you can use the reskit to retrieve data.  The Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit includes the ArchivingCDR Reporter tool. This reporting tool has built-in SQL queries to retrieve and view information from the Archiving and Call Detail Records (CDR) Server.

There are sample scripts in the Reskit. Also our product team has written some scripts for download that provide an extract of all IM for a defined user or all IM between two users. http://communicationsserverteam.com/archive/2008/01/14/69.aspx

One of our customers today asked about licensing of OCS Speech Server. Speech Server is part of OCS 2007 and requires a server license (Standard or Ent) and may also incur cost of CALs. When do I need CALs, when the application requires authentication for end users. So if most are external unauthenticated users and I have three internal users then I need three CALs. If the application is for External Callers and they are authenticated then I need either Std/Ent CALs or External Connectors. This is a considerable cost savings in comparison to 3rd party IVR platforms. Here's a chart that shows when/what licensing is needed for Speech Server.

For information on Speech server I always look at http://gotspeech.net which has now moved to :http://blogs.msdn.com/midunn/

Gateway sizing in OCS R2. When estimating the amount of ports on campus, use these guidelines:

· Light telephony users (one PSTN call per hour) should allocate one port for every 15 users. For example, if you have 20 users, you will require a gateway with two ports.

· Moderate telephony users (two PSTN calls per hour) should allocate one port for every 10 users. For example, if you have 100 users, you will require a total of 10 ports allocated among one or more gateways.

· Heavy telephony users (three or more PSTN calls per hour) should allocate one port for every five users. For example, if you have 47,000 users, you will require a total of 9,400 ports allocated among at least 10 large gateways.

· Additional ports can be acquired as the number of users or amount of traffic in your organization increases.

For any given number of users you must support, you have the choice of deploying fewer, larger gateways, or smaller ones. As a rule, a minimum of two gateways for an organization is recommended in the event one goes down. Beyond that, the number and size of gateways that an organization deploys are going to vary widely, based on a careful analysis of each organization’s volume of telephone traffic.

It’s best to work with your partner to define how many gateways need to be deployed for your OCS installation given size and future utilization. Each basic gateway does need to have a corresponding Mediation server so keep that in mind. We will be working on other OCS R2 guidance over the next few weeks.