OCS TechNet Forum Reorganization
November 10, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
This week Microsoft has begun the process to migrate all the current discussion forums for Unified Communications-related topics into a single category. As with any migration there is both an upside and a downside to these changes. Most importantly, going forward it will be much easier for users to locate the correct forum in which […]
OCS Communicator Web Access Listening Port
September 24, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · 1 Comment
During the deployment of an OCS Communicator Web Access Server there is a setting that is not covered in much detail in the documentation: the Communication Server Listening Port. No default or suggested value is given, as shown by this screenshot of the virtual server creation wizard: This port is used by the Communicator Web […]
More on OCS Edge Server Certificates
September 22, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
There are a pair of related Office Communications Server 2007 topics I wanted to expand on from previous blog articles that I’m still seeing come up quite often in both day-to-day projects and in the Microsoft discussion forums. One of them is centered around adding and supporting additional SIP domains. And because the two most […]
OCS Edge on Server 2008 – The Strong Host Model
September 17, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
The typical OCS deployment these days is using Windows Server 2008 instead of Server 2003 for the host OS now since R2 and Server 2008 have been out for some time, so a certain issue has begun to pop up in some deployments. Basically, if an R2 Edge server is deployed on Server 2008 and […]
OCS Certificate Deployment White Paper
August 28, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
Microsoft has just released a new white paper on using certificates with Office Communications Server. Although entitled “OCS 2007 R2 Deploying Certificates” it actually covers both 2007 and 2007 R2 versions of OCS. This is a very comprehensive document (just short of 100 pages) that covers everything from basic requirements down to specific scenarios like […]
OCS Deployment Log Tips
August 25, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
These are some pretty basic notes, but worth calling out for the benefit of users new to the OCS Deployment Wizard. Troubleshooting deployment issues is pretty common and the logs are the best place to start from. During the various setup wizards in OCS each step typically concludes with a window reporting either successful or […]
OCS R2 CWA Single Certificate Configuration
August 19, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
Although I find it best practice to deploy two separate certificates on an OCS R2 Communicator Web Access server, there are times when using a single certificate for both server-based MTLS and client-based SSL communications are the best approach, mainly cost if an internal CA is unavailable and all certificates are being purchased. The problem […]
OCS Services Hang on Startup
August 13, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
In a recent deployment OCS 2007 R2 Enterprise Edition was deployed to a physical server running Windows Server 2008 that began to exhibit problems immediately after the first reboot. Basically the server failed to respond to network traffic and was unreachable via RDP or other previously listening services after restarting. Upon connecting to the console […]
Managing Certification Authority Certificates for OCS
August 5, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
Typically in a basic deployment there are times when Windows workstations and servers which are not members of the internal Active Directory domain need to communicate with OCS servers. This could be attempting to sign-in to Office Communicator installed on a test workstation on the internal corporate network, as well as a perimeter-network server (like […]
OCS Service Startup Shutdown Order
August 4, 2009 by Jeff Schertz · Leave a Comment
Typically when restarting services in Windows most people use the Services snap-in or the net start/stop commands, but the OCS Management console offers a simple way to stop and start services in a pre-defined order. I investigated the behavior of this to learn what the preferred order or service dependencies may be (if at […]
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