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.

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/

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.

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.

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 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

Yesterday I was with a customer and we were talking about using Rights Management Protection with RMS and Windows 2008. As part of the eCAL Suite licensing package our customers have the client rights to deploy an RMS Server and provide protection for Outlook messages so with a campus agreement (with eCAL Suite)  and a Windows 2008 Server license you can protect email with RMS.

For information on how to deploy RMS with Windows 2008 please view this video: http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0706/29882/ADD-401_demo1/f.htm

Yes, however you have to change the default Exchange voicemail storage compression codec from WMA format to WAV for now. I have heard Blackberry is working on changing this at some point.

What storage codec options do I have for UM voicemails?

In general, UM supports three different storage compression codecs, including G.711 PCM (*.wav), GSM 6.1 (*.wav) and wma (*.wma). In terms of file size, G.711 PCM gives you best quality but largest size, GSM 6.1 is almost the same as WMA but lower audio quality.  You can find out more here (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998670.aspx). Keep in mind sizes of voicemails will increase with moving away from WMA (11k for 10 sec for WMA, 160k for 10 sec with G.711 and 16k for 10 sec with GSM)

Can I mix and match storage codecs in the same dialplan?

Yes, can either set GSM to apply to all the users in the dialplan or if you have a small subset of Blackberry users, you change just those users to WAV (GSM) and leave the rest as WMA. Using the Exchange shell you can change it like this for example:

Set-UMMailbox mailboxalias –CallAnsweringAudioCodec GSM 

More on the command options here.

Just a side note from a TCO perspective, a research company released a study where there is a 20-28% reduction in the TCO when moving to native Exchange ActiveSync (Windows Mobile/iPhone support) from Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Here is one solution I came up for a customer:

1) Add another web site to the Exchange CAS (OWA) server such as owamoss.colotech.edu

2) Added in a second /owa vdir to the new website you just created (e.g. owamoss.colotech.edu) via Exchange command shell:

New-OwaVirtualDirectory -WebSiteName "owa.moss.colotech.edu" -Name myowa2

3) Change the new /owa vdir in the new website to Windows Integrated

4) In SharePoint, point the SharePoint OWA webpart to the new website name (e.g. owamoss.colotech.edu).

Only use this new URL for MOSS webpart rendering and other users will continue to use the current URL for OWA such as mail.colotech.edu

This was a question from a Northeastern school district:

Mac Messenger 7.0

Mac Messenger 7.0 is available for a Mac user to login into either Windows Live (MSN) or OCS 2007:

                   Login to either Windows Live or OCS 2007

Messenger 7.0 client is similar to OC client on PC with presence, groups, etc.

You can grab Mac Messenger 7.0.1 here.

Features of the Mac Messenger 7.0 client:

• Presence
• 1-1 & Multi-party IM
• 1-1 & Multi-party Voice and video support with other OCS users
• Exchange Global Address List Search
• Enhanced Presence
• Bonjour support
• Office for Mac Integration
• Support for OCS Public IM Connectivity (connect to OCS off campus)
• NTLM & Kerberos Authentication
• Emoticons
• Secure IM - - encrypted. Same protocol as OC
• Spell check – This is a nice Mac only feature
• Multiple Points of Presence – MPOP implantation similar to OC – the ability to sign in with the same account on multiple devices
• Integration with Office for the Mac – display presence information for people that are in your Messenger contact list, start IM, add user as Messenger contacts, Integration in Entourage, Word, and Project Center…
• Conversation History Archive – saving Instant Messages and reviewing them in the Conversation History view.
• Selectable sign-in status – the ability to sign in with a specific status set (Busy, Away, Available…)
• File Transfer

  

Mac Messenger 7.0 OS requirements:

Mac OS X version 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version of Mac OS

Communicator Web Access (CWA) with Macs:

We support Firefox and Safari browsers on the Mac connecting to OCS 2007. With the upcoming OCS 2007 R2 CWA, you can take it a step further on the Mac or Linux browsers where you can join a PC desktop sharing session and view and collaborate with their desktops. There may be plans to allow for Mac to host at some point in the future (always subject to change of course).

What about On-Prem OCS Live Meeting support?

Currently, there is no Mac support at this point but the alternative solution to this is to use the Communicator Web Access coming in R2 to join a shared desktop session.  The other alternative option would be to leverage the Live Meeting Web Access, via a Mac browser, for the LM service in the cloud vs. with OCS. See my other blog here about the Live Meeting differences.

What are some of the differences with from the PC Office Communicator client, Communicator Web Access and the Mac Messenger 7.0 client? Here is a useful matrix: