Update Rollup 5 for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 released

The latest update for Exchange Server 2007 SP1 was released by Microsoft yesterday.

As usual, a number of issues are fixed – a couple of highlights:

955989 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955989/ ) The SPN registration of a cluster fails, and Error event IDs 1119 and 1034 are logged in an Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 environment

954197 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954197/ ) Exchange 2007 CAS cannot copy the OAB from the OAB share on Windows Server 2008-based Exchange 2007 CCR clusters

Download link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=652ed33a-11a1-459c-8ffe-90b9cbfe7903&displaylang=en&tm

Fix list: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=953467

Happy patching :-)

Office Communicator Mobile update

Just a quick note to point your attention to the latest release of Office Communicator Mobile (2007 Release).

A couple of fixes in the new release, most notably KB954769, which now enables login to Communicator Mobile when running in High Security mode - the update makes Communicator Mobile use NTLM for both medium security and high security mode.

Update description and list of fixes: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=954767

Update download link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2eea3e24-f216-4887-92b0-f37d942e26e0&displaylang=en&tm

ILM "2"

MIIS is a great engine for synchronization but the lack of a decent interface - for the administrator as well as for the end user - have made it necessary to either create a lot of code yourself or invest in other systems like Omada.
With ILM "2" (what a nice name...) the game has changed. While not as complete as Omada, ILM "2" seems to have a bunch of very useful features. I just attended an instructor led lab session here in Barcelona and the way and how easy you can do workflows and dynamic groups, makes a pure ILM "2" implementation possible - at least as a starting point or for simpler things. I haven't digged into ILM "2" too deep (yet), but what I have seen, seems ok.

Pull down an VHD with the RC-code from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/cc872861.aspx

Server 2008 R2 Active Directory and PowerShell

Filling my head at Tech-Ed, luckily, others are more efficient bloggers than I am.

Read this excellent summary by Dmitry of the "Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory: What’s Coming Up"” session at IT Forum (TechEd EMEA IT Pro) by Robert DeLuca and Alain Lissoir

A Day at Tech-Ed the PowerShell Way

Start-Service $body

Set-Location $bathroom
Clear-Item $body

Set-Location $restaurant
Get-Item $breakfast | Format-table | Add-Content $body

Set-Location $bathRoom
$body.oldFood | Out-Null
Clear-ItemProperty $body teeth

Set-Location $desk
$today=(Get-Date).Date
$potentialSessions=Get-ChildItem $sessions | `
 Where {$_.description -gt $interest -and $_.date -eq $today} | foreach {
  $_ | Add-Member Noteproperty Priority (read-host "Priority") -Passthru
 } | where {$_.priority}
$plannedSessions=$potentialSessions | group timeslot | foreach {
 $_.group | sort priority | select -first 1
}

Set-Location $conferenceCenter
$informationOverload=$false
$plannedSessions | foreach {
 if ($informationOverload) {
  Start-Sleep -Minutes 90
  $informationOverload=$false
 }
 else {
  Invoke-Item $_ | where {$_.content -notlike "sales pitch"} | `
   Add-Content -path $body.brain
 }
 [void] (Start-Sleep -Minutes 30) -and (Add-Content $body $coffee)
 if ($body.brain.overloaded) {$informationOverload=$true}
}

Set-Location ($anywhere | where {$_.beerCount -gt 5 -and $_.price -eq $null} | select -first 1)
while ($body.thirsty -and $body.alcoholPercentage -lt 1.5) {
 Add-Content $body $beer
}

Set-Location $hotelRoom
Start-Sleep -minutes (60*7)

# See you tomorrow ;)

OCS 2007 R2 Planning Tools – Update #2

You may have tried the OCS 2007 Planning Tool, that was Microsoft’s first try at creating a planning tool for OCS. When I blogged about the R1 version of the tool I emphasized that it was a good start, but there was room for improvement. At least one of my suggestions has been incorporated into the product (Not taking the credit for that though), namely removing the requirement for high availability at the small sites.

New features in the R2 Planning Tool are (from my memory of what was in the R1 tool) -

• Unified Messaging
• Monitoring Server (The replacement for QoE Monitoring, that includes CDR)
• The new Unified Communications Applications (New roles)
  • Response Group Service
  • Conference Auto-attendendant
  • Conference Announcement Service
  • Outside Voice Control
• Group Chat Server (New)
• Device Update Solution (The new Update Server, that is automagically installed with OCS and includes updates of Office Communicator 2007 clients)

Then the design of how to handle sites is greatly enhanced, it will for each site you deploy ask you a series of questions about what you want to deploy at each site e.g.

• Online Collaboration
  • Conferencing features
  • CWA
  • Group Chat
• Users
  • Internal and/or federated (Basically do you want to deploy Edge)
• Voice
  • Enterprise Voice (E.g. do you want local Mediation Servers)

Lastly you will be asked if you want to use Edge Servers at a specific site or Edge Servers for each site.

So a lot of new features including even better links and explanations for scalability, planning steps and assumptions for users – a very good step forward (although we still need to be able to export the topology drawings to Visio files ;-) and it doesn’t end up with 225 servers for a simple OCS deployment, due to the more detailed questions related to sites. UPDATE #2 – at TechEd we were told that export to Visio will be part of the product.

I haven’t included screenshots in this post as I’m not sure if they are still covered under NDA, but basically the tool looks very similar to the old version.

The Edge Planning Tool will be enhanced for R2 as well, but this wasn’t demonstrated and I haven’t seen it either. Take a look at the current version at Tom Laciano’s blog or Jeff Schertz detailed post on the current Edge Planning Tool.