1] Communications Server 2007 R2 Does Not Support Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

An official statement was released regarding OCS 2007 R2 not supporting SQL Server 2008 R2 for the back-end database. The primary reason is that OCS 2007 R2 hasn’t been tested with SQL Server 2008 R2 [...]]]> Three recent OCS developments you should be aware of:

1] Communications Server 2007 R2 Does Not Support Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

An official statement was released regarding OCS 2007 R2 not supporting SQL Server 2008 R2 for the back-end database. The primary reason is that OCS 2007 R2 hasn’t been tested with SQL Server 2008 R2 which contains some significant changes to functionality. For more information see:

> http://blogs.technet.com/b/drrez/
> Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Storage Requirements

2] The July 2010 Cumulative Update 6 (CU6) has been Pulled Until Further Notice

In case you missed it, on Sept 2^nd, Microsoft temporarily removed the Cumulative Update 6 (CU6) until an issue with the Response Group Service can be fixed. See: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Response Group Service Fails After Applying July 2010 Cumulative Updates for more information. The corresponding Microsoft Knowledge Base article is KB 2401878 and can be viewed here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2401878.

3] Communications Server 2010 TechNet Documentation Available

Microsoft TechNet has posted some documentation for Communications Server 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff770144.aspx including a section on “New Features in Communications Server 2010”. Thanks to Tommy Clarke for pointing this out: http://www.cinline.se/2010/09/technet-documentation-of-communications-server-2010-ocs-cs14/.

Microsoft Lync

Lastly, some interesting mention of a new re-branding of the next version of Microsoft’s Unified Communication Client (aka Communicator “14”): “Microsoft Lync”: It is referenced on this blog (http://mslync.blogspot.com/) which is not an official Microsoft blog, so it maybe a hoax. There is another write-up on it here: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-next-generation-voipconferencing-client-to-debut-as-lync/7331.

OCSLogger.exe Overview

The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Logging Tool (OCSLogger.exe) is installed by default on most OCS server roles. It can be used to capture logging and tracing information while the server is running. You can analyze protocol logs for the following [...]]]> Here is a quick getting-started reference for debugging direct SIP traffic between OCS and an IP-PBX.

OCSLogger.exe Overview

The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Logging Tool (OCSLogger.exe) is installed by default on most OCS server roles. It can be used to capture logging and tracing information while the server is running. You can analyze protocol logs for the following components:

• Office Communications Server SipStack (SIP)
• Office Communications Server S4 (SIP)
• Office Communications Server Conferencing signaling traffic (C3P), including MCU Infra C3P and Focus C3P
• Office Communications Server Web conferencing traffic (PSOM)
• Office Communications Server Unified Communications Client Platform client (UCCP)
• Error reports from the archiving database

To Start a Debugging Session

1 .Run the OCS logging tool: OCSLogger.exe. It is located in “%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2\Tracing”
2. Set a folder for the OCSLogger.exe log files (e.g. C:\Windows\Temp)
3. Select your logging level:  If you are trying to debug a problem, start with just “Errors”. If you are investigating something, start with “All”

To View the Incoming SIP traffic from the IP-PBX to the OCS Mediation Server & the Protocol Traffic from the OCS Mediation Server to the OCS Front-End

4. Select the following Components in the Logging Options:
- Mediation Server (this will give all the Mediation server protocol in/out processing)
- S4 (this will log the SIP protocol requests – including the SIP traffic to/from the IP/PBX)

5. Select “Start Logging” and place a sample call. Select “Stop Logging” after the sample call is finished.
6. After you have ended the debug session, click Analyze Log Files to view the log files. Note, the Snooper tool is launched to view the log files.
7. Notes:
- The underlying log files are in .ETL format.
- The times displayed in OCSLogger are in GMT!

View the Protocol Communication and Internal Tracing of the Microsoft Office Communicator End-point

When debugging direct SIP sessions, it is also useful to see the full end-to-end information. In some circumstances the call will make it through to the Communicator end-point, and Communicator will reject the call. Do view the internal tracing of the Communicator end-point:

1. Turn on tracing in Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2: Tools | Options | General | Turn on logging in Communicator.
2. Navigate to the Communicator 2007 R2 trace file directory (i.e. C:\Users\<user-id>\Tracing)
3. Open the most recent Communicator trace file named Communicator-uccapi-<integer>.uccapilog with the Snopper.exe tool. Snooper.exe is a tool included in the OCS 2007 R2 Resource Kit that can be used to help you analyze SIP and C3P protocol logs.
4. Note: the Resource Kit installed into “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2\ResKit”.

More Information

- TechNet: Using Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Logging Tool

- Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit Tools

In addition to the information in [...]]]> I recently co-authored a Microsoft Next Hop article that gives an introduction to configuring Direct SIP between Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 and Cisco Call Manager 7.1 – see Direct SIP: Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.1. This post gives addition information about further integrating the systems from an end user perspective.

In addition to the information in the Next Hop Direct SIP article, it is worth clarifying that a new range of phone numbers assigned to Communicator endpoints must be defined in CUCM. This new range needs to be separate from any existing number range used for Cisco desk phone endpoints. For end users who have both a Cisco desk phone and a Communicator client, this means that the same number cannot be used for inbound and outbound dialing. This restriction exists because call routing for Communicator clients in CUCM is achieved by creating a new SIP trunk used solely for Communicator endpoints, and multiple device endpoints cannot share the same number when the call routing is defined on different SIP trunks.

One option to use an existing Cisco desk phone number for Communicator inbound and outbound calling is by implementing the CUCM Simultaneous Ring feature. CUCM will ring the Communicator endpoint for incoming Cisco desk phone calls, and outbound Communicator calls will show the caller-id of the users Cisco desk phone. Simultaneous ring is configured on a per user basis in a user’s Cisco Remote Destination Profile. See the Cisco document “Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition using Direct SIP to Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0(1) Simultaneous Ring Feature“. Additional references are included at the end of this article.

The CUCM Simultaneous Ring feature is configured per user on the Cisco IP-PBX, and is accomplished by setting a secondary extension to ring for that user when an incoming call is placed for their Cisco desk phone extension. The next section details the steps to configure it for a user.

Steps to Configure for a User for Simultaneous Ring

#1] Have the user log into the Cisco Unified CM Administration tool. By default this is installed at https://<ccmhost>/ccmadmin/showHome.do. CUCM can be configured to use the users AD credentials, or separate credentials for users. Here is a screen shot of the login screen:

#2] Select the ‘Remote Destinations’ menu option from the User Options | Mobility Settings menu on the left-hand side of the top menu bar.

#3] Select ‘Add New’ from the top menu. Note: if a user already has an existing Remote Destination Profile that they want to Edit, select the Find button in this menu to list the existing Remote Destination Profiles.  The Find button is highlighted in red in the screenshot below for this step.

#4] Specify a name for this Remote Destination Profile, and more importantly, the extension to ring. This will be the extension that will ring thru to OCS and ultimately the recipient Microsoft Office Communicator.

Additional Information

• Link to the Cisco document: “Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition using Direct SIP to Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0(1) Simultaneous Ring Feature”
• TechNet Blogs > Jochen Kunert > Voice scenarios with OCS 2007.
• Microsoft “Integrating Telephony with Office Communications Server 2007 and 2007 R2“
• Useful Microsoft OCS Forum Postings:
  • Enterprise Voice and Telephony > Best integration possible with CUCM 7.1
  • Dual Call Forking – CUCM 7.0.2.
  • OCS 2007 PBX Integration with CUCM 6.0
  • Configuring MOC to Answer Calls in Different Ways.
• Cisco Forum Reference to Routing with SIP URI:  “CUCM 7.0.2 – Dual Forking, not working!”
• Elan’s Blog: Two new Qualified IP-PBXs for OCS (CUCM and Seltatel)

Office Live Meeting Window Client

In a nutshell, if you try to install any of the OCS 2007 R2 roles or Group Chat Server, on a server that has the .NET 4.0 Framework installed along side the .NET Framework 2.0 or .NET Framework [...]]]> A quick update on the reported issues with installing OCS 2007 R2 on machines that have .NET 4.0.

In a nutshell, if you try to install any of the OCS 2007 R2 roles or Group Chat Server, on a server that has the .NET 4.0 Framework installed along side the .NET Framework 2.0 or .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1), you’ll get an error.

A Knowledge Base article was released this morning that provides more details and gives a workaround: You cannot install Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Unified Communications Managed API 2.0 Core Redist or Office Communications Server 2007, Unified Communications Managed API v1.0 Redist.

** Sept 2, 2010 Update **: Microsoft has temporarily removed the Cumulative Update 6 (CU6) until an issue with the Response Group Service can be fixed. See News: Office [...]]]> There has been a new round of updates for Communicator 2007 R2, OCS 2007 R2, and OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat – known as Cumulative Update 6 (CU6).

** Sept 2, 2010 Update **: Microsoft has temporarily removed the Cumulative Update 6 (CU6) until an issue with the Response Group Service can be fixed. See News: Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Response Group Service Fails After Applying July 2010 Cumulative Updates for more information. The corresponding Microsoft Knowledge Base article is KB 2401878 and can be viewed here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2401878.

** July 30, 2010 Update **: It appears that the reported CU6 problems have been attributable to either the back end database update not being installed first, or the OCS 2007 R2 .NET Framework 4.0 issue. Having said that, there was at least one report (on this blog) of the “mismatch error” even after the database install was applied first.

** July 26, 2010 Update **:  There have been several reports of problems (failure of the Front End Service to start) after applying the CU6 updates on the server. Consider holding off applying this update until more information is known.  It is important to install the CU 6 update to the back end database role first (see Description of the cumulative update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 database: July, 2010).  So far, the problems appear to be related to this, but more information to come.

Client Updates

Communicator 2007 R2:

• The July, 2010 update for Communicator 2007 R2 can be found here:  Description of the cumulative update package for Communicator 2007 R2: July 2010. This update brings the Communicator version up to 3.5.6907.206 from the last update in April 2010 (3.5.6907.196).
• Note: the links to the knowledge base article for the individual fixes do not work right now, or not ready yet, on the Microsoft support site.
• The update can be downloaded here.

Communicator 2007 R2 Phone Edition:

• The July, 2010 update for Communicator 2007 R2 can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2267962/.
• The update can be downloaded here.

Communicator 2007 R2 Mobile:

• This was update was released about 2 weeks ago, but the knowledge base article has been updated. The description can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969816.
• You can download the Smartphone update here.
• You can download the Pocket PC packager here.

OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat Client:

• The July 2010 update can be found here: Description of the update for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Client: July 2010.
• The update can be downloaded here.

Server Updates

OCS 2007 R2 Server:

• Note: the update for the SE/EE Back End Database is here: Description of the cumulative update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 database: July, 2010.  This update (OCS2009-DBUpgrade.msi) SHOULD BE RUN FIRST.
• All of the Cumulative 6 server updates can be found here: Updates for Communications Server 2007 R2.
• The updates can be downloaded here.
• It looks like the update includes new hotfixes for the following server roles: Audio/Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing Server, Core Components, Communicator Web Access, Conferencing Attendant, Standard/Enterprise edition Server Back End, and the UCMA Managed API 2.0 Core Redist 64-bit.
• Note: the links to the knowledge base article for the individual fixes do not work right now, or not ready yet, on the Microsoft support site.

OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat Server:

• The Cumulative 6 updates for the Group Chat Server can be found here: Update package for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Server: July 2010.
• The Group Chat Server update can be downloaded here.

OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat Admin Tool:

• The update can be found here: Description of the update for the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat Administration Tool: July 2010.
• The update can be downloaded here.

1) QoE and CDR Database [...]]]> The Call Detail Record (CDR) and Quality of Experience (QoE) data available through the OCS 2007 R2 Monitoring Server role enables very good usage and quality of experience reporting.  This blog post covers how to estimate the size of the database, and how to manage the database data rentention and purge time.

1) QoE and CDR Database Sizing
Based on a sample Microsoft OCS feature usage model (the same one used for the OCS 2007 R2 Capacity Planning), the CDR database grows 8.8 KB per day, and the QoE database grows 16.8 KB per day.  Once we know this, we can estimate the database size using this formula:

> Database size (KB) = (DB growth per user per day) * (Number of users) * (Number of days)

For example, the CDR and QoE database in a 3500 OCS user organization would consume a total of 5.3 GB in 60 days ((8.8+16.8) * 3500 * 60).

2) Setting the Data Retention
The default data retention for both CDR and QoE data is 60 days. Every night the purge process will delete any records which are older than this value. The retention setting can be viewed and set in the OCS Administrator Console by doing a right-click | Properties on particular monitoring server in the left-hand tree. The property page looks like the following:

Set the Maximum Days Logged to the number of days that you wish to retain the respective data sets.

Note:

• To purge everything, use a value of zero.
• Leave the checkbox unchecked to turn-off purging all together.
• You can also manage these settings through WMI.

3) Setting the Purge Time

Specifying the time of day that the SQL database purges the data cannot be set through the OCS Administrative Console. You need to use WMI to make this setting. The WMI classes to set the QoE and CDR purge times are shown below:

1. QoE:  use the MSFT_SIPQoESetting class and set the PurgeJobStartTime property.  The value is an integer representing the number of hours after midnight to start the purging (i.e the hour based on a 24 hour clock).  For example, a value of “1” will start the purging at 1am.
2. CDR:  use the MSFT_SIPCDRServiceSetting class and set the PurgeTime property. This also is an integer value representing the number of hours after midnight to start the purging of outdated records.

These classes are only installed and available on the Monitoring Server. However, you can use the “-computername” parameter in WMI provider to remotely view and set value.

For example, the following two lines of Powershell, can be used to remotely set the Purge Time for the CDR database to be 4am:

Note: if you are using multiple monitoring servers connected to one monitoring database, it is important to not start the purging on each server simultaneously.  See the TechNet article Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Configuring Retention of QoE and CDR Data for more information

Addition Information

• Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Configuring Retention of QoE and CDR Data (TechNet)
• Key high-level information about the OCS 2007 R2 Monitoring role: OCS 2007 R2 Monitoring Role FAQ (InsideOCS post)
• Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2Monitoring Support (TechNet)
• MSDN MSFT_SIPQoESetting (New)
• MSDN MSFT_SIPCDRServiceSetting (New)