It is 100% free and open to the public, so register now!

Sign up today at: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298

Event Overview

Adopting this exciting new computing paradigm provides a whole new landscape of technology and career direction for IT professionals. Microsoft Learning and the Microsoft System Center 2012 team have partnered to bring you an exciting opportunity to learn what you need to know to deploy, manage and maintain Microsoft’s private cloud solution. Leveraging the popular Jump Start virtual classroom approach, the industry’s most gifted cloud experts will show attendees why this new private cloud solution, based on System Center 2012 and Windows Server, has garnered so much attention. Presenters include Symon Perriman, Sean Christensen, Adam Hall, Kenon Owens, Prabu Rambadran & Chris Van Wesep and there will be a live Q&A during the event.

Event Agenda

Day 1: Deployment & Configuration (Feb. 21)

· Part 1: Understanding the Microsoft Private Cloud

· Part 2: Deploying the Infrastructure Components

· Part 3: Deploying the Private Cloud Infrastructure

· Part 4: Deploying the Service Layer

· Part 5: Deploying the Applications & VMs

Day 2: Management & Operations (Feb. 22)

· Part 6: Managing the Infrastructure Components

· Part 7: Managing the Private Cloud Infrastructure

· Part 8: Managing the Service Layer

· Part 9: Managing the Applications & VMs

Sign up today at: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298

Jump Start Overview

This accelerated Jump Start sponsored by Microsoft Learning is tailored for IT professionals familiar with Windows Server technologies, Hyper-V virtualization, and the System Center management solutions. The course is designed to provide a fast-paced and technical understanding of how and why Microsoft’s approach to the private cloud delivers scalability, security, flexibility and control. Here are few unique benefits of this course:

· Students have the opportunity to learn from and interact with the industry’s best cloud technologists!

· This high-energy, demo-rich learning experience will help IT Professionals understand why Microsoft private cloud solutions are making a splash in the industry.

· Students will see with their own eyes how Windows Server 2008 R2 and System Center 2012 work together to provide the best combination of security and scale.

· Information-packed agenda! Day one of this two-day online course will focus on designing and deploying the right solutions for your organization, while day two will provide an in-depth look at the tools available to help monitor, secure and control the operational aspects of a private cloud.

Sign up today at: http://mctreadiness.com/MicrosoftCareerConferenceRegistration.aspx?pid=298

So I reviewed the get-help just to make sure I didn’t miss anything and fired off the command using my personal account as a test:

Get-Mailbox russ.kaufmann | Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration –AutoReplyState Enabled -ExternalAudience All -InternalMessage “Hello, I will be out of the office until the end of February. Please e-mail my team with any issues that need attention while I am away. Thank You.” -ExternalMessage “Hello, I will be out of the office until the end of February. Please e-mail my team with any issues that need attention while I am away. Thank You.” -EndTime 3/1/2012

I then ran the command to make sure that everything took properly. I ran:

Get-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration | FL

This is where I became confused. Everything looked great except that the EndTime showed tomorrow’s date (2/1/2012). At this point, I asked myself, “Self, WTF? Did you not type the date in the correct format?”

I ran the command again and again, modifying the time parameter by putting it in quotes and adding the time of the day along with the date, but it just wouldn’t set the EndTime to the 3/1/2012.

The answer to my angst: You have use use “–AutoReply Scheduled” instead of “-AutoReply Enabled” in order to set the EndTime. This worked perfectly

This lesson was brought to you by the letter W .

DNS Load Balancing (DNS LB) is a new feature in Lync Server 2010. Basically, DNS LB uses DNS round-robin entries, and the Lync 2010 clients use their own mechanism to load balance across servers. The Lync client is able to use the entries in DNS and use its own algorithm to select a server from the servers in a pool. If the selected server is unavailable, the Lync client is able to select another server in the pool. There are lots of great articles on how DNS LB works, so I won’t go into any depth here.

What keeps bugging me is which comes first in a migration, the chicken or the egg? By this, I mean, do you deploy new servers first or new clients first. Well, that is easy in the case of an upgrade to Lync. The Lync 2010 client is not supported for use with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) servers. The server environment must be upgraded first.

Wait. What does that mean?

OK, the basic migration from OCS 2007 R2 to Lync Server 2010 goes like this (I am going to ignore the Edge for now, as it doesn’t matter for my point):

1. Start with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 (MOC 2007 R2) clients and OCS 2007 R2 servers.
2. Add a new Lync 2010 Server pool(s).
3. Migrate users to the new pool(s).
4. Upgrade MOC 2007 R2 clients to Lync 2010 clients.
5. Retire OCS 2007 R2 servers.

Yes, there are many more steps for the migration, but these are the big ones. Did you notice that after Step3, you have MOC 2007 R2 clients running against Lync Server 2010 servers?

So what? Well, in order to use DNS LB, you must have Lync 2010 clients. So, how do you get the MOC 2007 R2 clients to run against the Lync Server 2010 server environment? Well, you do that by not using DNS LB. You have to set up Hardware Load Balancing (HLB) if you want MOC 2007 R2 clients to be able to properly connect to Lync Server 2010 servers as the MOC 2007 R2 clients are not able to leverage DNS LB and still support high availability (HA) while performing the migration.

So, to summarize: Unless you can do a green field installation of Lync Server 2010 or can cut over every single client from MOC 2007 R2 to the new Lync 2010 client at once, the dream of DNS LB won’t be reality. After all, if you need to configure HLBs to support your HA requirements during the migration, why would you bother going back and implementing DNS LB?

No OWA for me. After all, if OWA is published, it can be attacked with lots of improper connection attempts. If Outlook Anywhere, also known as RPC over HTTPs, is available, the servers can be attacked. It is bad enough that the Exchange environment has to listen for port 25 connections. Lots of nasty viruses are transmitted over port 25.

If I could, I would wrap my servers in sterile plastic and rubber. Safe computing is vital, or you could catch something very bad and spread it around.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I had the need to access the Microsoft Federation Gateway (MFG) to share free/busy information with another company. Imagine me getting that bad feeling of having to expose my servers to that dirty, filthy, bad Internet.

My first take was that I was going to have to work with all of the firewall guys and have them open up the ports to the MFG. I have to say this really scared me as it required:

1. Opening everything needed for OWA access from the Internet
2. Limiting the access to just the servers for the MFG.

Option 1 is much scarier than Option 2. Option 2, though is scary enough. Per Microsoft’s documentation, you need to open the following from all of the Client Access servers in the environment to the MFG IP ranges and URLs:

207.46.150.128/25
207.46.164.0/24
*.microsoftonline-p.com
*.live.com
*.microsoftonline.com
*.microsoftonlinesupport.net

In case you didn’t notice the *.live.com entry, let me point it out. I about spit up lunch when I saw it. Opening Exchange up to everything at live.com was enough to make me choke and spit and make me ill over all.

OK, that all said, I was on a call with a MFG specialist and he said, “Damn, Russ, you are paranoid. Why don’t you just use a Proxy server in your company to make the connections and then you won’t have to screw around with the firewall rules needed.” Hmmm, proxy server? I like that much more, and it seemed like a much better solution. So, I asked the question, “OK, I know how to set the browser and other applications to use the proxy server, but that requires inputting the settings in the interface, but I am not aware of any method for inputting the settings so that the Client Access server can leverage the proxy server.”

Aha, the key! I learned something new in that I was unaware that it was possible. A simple PowerShell command, and all was well.

get-exchangeserver | where {$_.serverrole -ilike ‘*clientaccess*’} | Set-ExchangeServer -InternetWebProxy http://ProxyServerName:Port#

I am sorry it took me so long to get to the point, but I just had to share the pain and anguish that I experienced and then share the easy solution.

Immediately, I noticed that my own picture was not showing in the client. I know that it works for the Lync 2010 install on my desktop and on my laptop. I use a photo that is located at a Web URL.

I did a little digging and was told that the picture had to be available in Active Directory (AD DS) for it to be seen and used by the Lync 2010 Mobile client. So, I imported my picture into AD along with a few others for testing. I waited a day just to be sure there wasn’t an issue with the Address Book Service (ABS) refreshing. I also waited three more days just to make sure that all processes had a chance to run.

Still no pictures on my Lync Mobile.

What I did find odd, though, is that other people that installed Lync Mobile after I had uploaded the pics into AD were getting the pics. I have since found out that this is reproducible and it isn’t just something that I missed. So, I tested this by uninstalling Lync Mobile and reinstalling it. Ta-da! My pic appeared along with the others that I had uploaded.

However, my Federated contacts are still not seeing my pic from their Lync Mobile clients even though they do see them in their desktop client installs. This is an expected behavior. Federated contacts will not have access to the pictures uploaded in AD DS through the Lync Mobile client. So, users may complain about how they can see pictures when using their desktop or laptop, but they are not able to see the pictures for Federated contacts. As much as it might be a pain, it is the way the product works.

By the way, I have also installed the Lync Mobile client on my test iPhone and my iPad. It works like a charm. Hopefully, I will get a chance to work with the Android client in the not too distant future.

Of course, with anything new, there are challenges.

Challenge #1 – I heard from good friends that the client was available on Sunday. So, I went to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, and I couldn’t find it. Of course, it is now there, but it was not on Sunday. So, I went to the link off of the Windows Phone 7 site and used the link there to do a remote install. The process was pretty nice. I clicked the proper links, and within a couple of minutes, the new Lync client was installed on my phone for me.

Challenge #2 – I filled in my information so that I could connect to my Office 365 Lync environment. It was pretty simple. I put in my info, but the Lync client would not connect.

I received the following:

Error message – Unable to sign in. Can’t connect to the server. It might be unavailable. Also please check your network connection, sign-in address, and server addresses.

The answer wasn’t as obvious as I would like, but what it came down to was that I needed to update my DNS. Now, if I were having Office 365 host my DNS, it would not have been a problem as Office 365 populates DNS with the records required, but I am hosting DNS at a third party since my Website is also hosted at a third party location.

The solution is a simple one: I created a CNAME record for lyncdiscover.infrastructurehelp.com that points to webdire.online.lync.com in my DNS.

Once I updated my DNS, the Lync client connected without any issues, and I have been off and running ever since.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6797

It is now updated to include the mobility components.

Nice work, team!

It is one thing to be able to leverage Lync in an organization, but it is completely another level when you are able to federate with other organizations and work more effectively with business partners.

When I found this blog yesterday, I actually did a little happy dance. It is a fantastic tool, and I can’t recommend it enough.

An hour after finding the tool, I installed it, and used it to identify several people that are available via federation that I work with on a regular basis. Now that I have added them as contacts, it is so much easier to communicate and keep projects moving forward.

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Who-Can-Federate-Tool-a9e00d23

Check it out, it is worth your time.

Despite my exposure to PowerShell, I strive to learn more about it each and every day.

Lync Server 2010’s use of PowerShell has also made the administration of many tasks much easier. How can you not love it?

The other day, I stumbled across this great blog post by Tom Arbuthnot, a consultant at Modality. What Tom has done is build some nice flash files that help provide a visual of the various Lync cmdlets available. He has organized the cmdlets by Category and by Verb. Below is a snapshot of the Category mind map, but I am not providing the actual flash files here because I really would prefer that you go directly to Tom’s blog and access them there.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/TechNet/en-us/Office/media/WindowsPowerShell/WindowsPowerShellCommandBuilder.html

Take a look and see if it makes sense to pass along the link.