Many times I have had issues with starting the OCS services on a consolidated front-end starting (fortunately, this has been mostly confined to lab environments). For the benefit of others, here are the 4 most common reasons for OCS service logon failures that I have experienced:
- The OCS Service Logon Accounts Have Expired.
- Event log errors 7000 and 1021 will typically appear if the passwords for the OCS accounts have expired as per the AD Default Domain Policy.
- If the password for the default OCS service accounts (i.e. RTCService, RTCComponentService) is not correct, you will typically see an event log error 1609: “The service did not start due to a logon failure.”
- The resolution is to open up Active Directory Users and Computers and set the Password Never Expires on RTCService, RTCComponentService (if that is suitable for your password policy).
- The OCS Server Clock is Wrong.
- This will cause a variety of Kerbos authentication errors – as seen in the event log.
- All Domain Controllers are down in the AD Forest.
- This can easily happen if your lab environment is like most lab environments and has one DC
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- The event log will contain several errors – usually pertaining to basic Windows services – before the OCS services start to complain.
- OCS 2007 R2 Services Hang After a Reboot on Windows Server 2008.
For reference, here are the names of the 5 major OCS 2007 R2 services on a consolidated front-end:
- Office Communications Server Front-End
- Office Communications Server IM Conferencing
- Office Communications Server Web Conferencing
- Office Communications Server Audio/Video Conferencing
- Office Communications Server Telephony Conferencing
I recently took a look at the “Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool”. I was looking forward to taking a look at OCSStress.exe which is an OCS workload and user activity simulation tool (included as part of the capacity planning tool). Those with Microsoft Exchange backgrounds will remember it’s close cousins – LoadGenerator and LoadSim.
You can use it for simulating user activities, benchmarking, pre-deployment validation, and to see the affects of different UC workloads in a lab or pre-production environment.
This OCS Stress Simulator tool is capable of simulating the following user activities:
- SIP Sign-in
- Get presence
- Send/receive instant messages
- Create IM conferences and send messages in conferences
- Address book download and address book query
- Distribution list expansion
- PSTN Gateway loads
- VoIP traffic (calls to Mediation Server, Audio/Video MCU, Edge Server, Response Group Service, and Conference Auto Attendant when these scenarios are enabled.)
Noteworthy pre-requisite, installation, and usage notes:
- OCSStress.exe cannot run on a computer that is also running Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It is installed on a client machine that will simulate the OCS traffic. You also install it on the back-end database server for each pool.
- It needs to be installed and run on the back-end database server (enterprise pool or standard edition). This creates the user accounts.
- Is only available in 64-bit and runs on Windows 2003 and Windows 2008.
- You must run it under a user who is part of the DomainAdmins group.
- The Exchange Server 2007 ForestProp needs to be run. This creates the test distribution lists, and integration with Exchange UM.
- The first time a test is run the test users logon for the first time and there is additional initialization operations that occurs on the backend. It is recommended that you run a short test first, and then start benchmarking.
- The results are reported in performance counters that are installed on the client when OCSStress is installed.
The OCS 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool (which includes OCSstress) can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f8cbddd6-7608-4bbe-9246-16e96c62bef4&displaylang=en. In July 2009 there were some hotifx updates to this tool which corrected some problems. Those fixes are udpated in the download above.
The LCS 2005 equivalent can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=107a5e83-ca59-4bcb-a3bc-27efd97a477d&displaylang=en.
The document “Running Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a Virtualized Topology” has additional good information on configuring and using this tool.
I have only used the tool for basic sign-in and IM, but I’ll update this post with my experiences as I used it more. I am also interested in people’s experience with it.
The Inside OCS Quality of Experience (QoE) – Quick Facts post has been a popular read. This post provides additional answers to the most common questions about deploying the OCS 2007 R2 Monitoring Role (which now houses the QoE and Call Detail Record (CDR) functionality in R2).
Q. Is installation of the Monitoring Server Role supported on a Virtual Image?
A. No, it is only supported to run on phyiscal hardware (fyi – the same true for the Archiving Role).
Q. Is it supported to use the OCS Monitoring Role in a virtualized pool?
A. Yes, but only the CDR functionality. The Monitoring Role can be installed on a physical machine and connected to a virtualized pool. OCS server roles that provide any audio (or video) functionality are not supported in a virtualized Enterprise pool so associating the QoE Service with virtualized Enterprise pool is not supported.
Collocation Questions & Answers
Q. Is it supported to collocate the R2 Monitoring Server databases with the OCS R2 Monitoring Role itself?
A. Yes, with the usual scalability and performance caveat (e.g. design the database for optimal scalability and performance – see the “Scaling” section of the R2 Monitoring Deployment Guide).
Q. Is it supported to collocate the R2 Monitoring Server with the Standard Edition server?
A. Yes, however you must use the full edition of SQL Server on the server instead of using the SQL Server Express Edition normally used with a Standard Edition server.
Q. Is it supported to collocate the R2 Monitoring Server databases on the same SQL server as other OCS server databases? (e.g. Enterprise or Standard back-end database, Archiving database, or the Response Group Service database, for example).
A. Yes, with the usual scalability and performance caveat (e.g. design the database for optimal scalability and performance – see the “Scaling” section of the R2 Monitoring Deployment Guide).
Q. Is it supported to collocate the R2 Monitoring Server databases with other databases from 3rd party products?
A. Yes, however it is recommended you run the Monitoring Server databases in a separate instance from other databases (see the “Scaling” section of the R2 Monitoring Deployment Guide).
Q. Can you install the QoE and CDR databases on different SQL servers?
A. No. The Monitoring Server databases (the QoE and CDR databases) are seperate databases, but they both must run on the same SQL server (and in the same SQL instance).
Q. What versions of SQL can the Monitoring databases use?
A. SQL Server 2008 (32-bit or 64-bit) or SQL Server 2005 with Service Pack 2 (32-bit or 64-bit).
Q. Can you associate multiple Monitoring servers with a single Monitoring Database?
A. Yes.
Q. Approximately how many users can a single Monitoring Server Scale to?
A. A single Monitoring Server can serve up to 200,000 users. If you have multiple pools that total less than 200,000 users, we recommend that you associate all these pools with a single Monitoring Server
Additional Information
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 – Deploying Monitoring Server Guide (download from the list)
Microsoft TechNet – Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Monitoring (Feature Description)
Microsoft TechNet – Archiving and Monitoring for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (Infrastructure Description)
Microsoft TechNet – Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Deploying Monitoring Server (Deployment Steps)
OCS and Communicator have the ability to communicate with the Public IM contacts – specifically users on MSN (now Windows Live), AOL, and Yahoo!. There are a few known issues and limitations that I wanted to recap for the benefit of others.
Functionality Available for Communication with Public IM Contacts
A reminder that communication with Public IM Connectivity (PIC) contacts today is limited to peer-to-peer (no multi-party), and Instant Messaging and Presence information only – no audio, video, desktop sharing, or file sharing.
Special Format to Use when Adding an MSN Contact that has a Non-MSN Domain
When a Communicator user is adding an MSN contact with a non-MSN domain, the user needs to add the contact using the special format: user_name(domain.com)@msn.com. See “Communicate with MSN, AOL and Yahoo! users” for more information.
Issue with the ‘Add Contact’ Wizard when Adding an MSN Contact with a non-MSN Domain
There is an issue in the Office Communicator client such that when a user attempts to use the “Add Contact” Wizard to add an MSN Messenger contact who has a non-MSN domain, they receive an “Address is not valid” error:
The workaround is to use the Communicator contact Search text box to add the contact.
Other Public IM Usage Reminders
Lastly, recently Additional Windows Live Messenger PIC/Federation IP Addresses (as reported on the Microsoft OCS team blog) have been added to increase federation capacity. You should read the above blog entry if your organization federates with MSN via specific IP addresses.
The January 2010 updates are available the Office Live Meeting Console and the Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In. Thanks to Aaron Tiensivu for catching this recent update to the Office Live Meeting Console and the Outlook Conferencing Add-In.
The Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In update makes available a 64-bit version which works with the 64-bit version of the Office 2010 Beta.
Office Live Meeting Console
Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In
In case you missed it, these updates go hand-in-hand with the January 2010 Updates to Office Communicator 2007 R2 and OCS 2007 R2 Server.
The January 2010 updates have been released for the Office Communicator 2007 R2 Client and the OCS 2007 R2 Server.
Office Communicator 2007 R2
Office Communications Server 2007 R2
There are also updates reported on Aaron Tiensivu’s blog for the OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat server and the OCS 2007 R2 Tanjay Phone.
Happy updating .
In the spirit of a new year, here is a glimpse of what to expect from OCS in 2010.
The next release of Office Communications Server and Communicator together with Exchange 2010 is currently referred to as UC “Wave 14″ (code-name). The latest publicly available release date is in “late 2010”.
February 12, 2010 Update: the Wave 14 release of Communicator is expected to be called Office Communicator 2010 and is reportedly going to made available in Beta in late March 2010. It was also reported that Microsofot was going to publicly demo it in mid-March at UCExpo.
Few details exist on new stuff coming on the server-side, but here is a recap of what is publicly known:
1) A new version of Office Communications Server (likely to be called OCS 2010). Here are the highlights:
- Capable of being a full PBX replacement (another step in Microsoft’s software powered telephony vision).
- New “Branch Survivability” features (more branch availability options besides deploying more servers).
- Emergency 911 support.
- PSTN Failover.
- Analog Device Support.
- Remote Call Control will be deprecated (existing RCC deployments will likely be able to upgrade and be supported).
- There will likely be a new ‘Voice CAL’ (Client Access License) for users to access the new enterprise-voice features.
2) A new version Office Communicator (code-named “14” right-now).
3) New OCS Server and Client Development SDK’s:
- A set of fully supported (not just samples) Communicator controls in WPF and Silverlight.
- UCMA 3.0 will be a server-side API with workflow activities.
- Much more information is available in Chris Mayo’s PDC session (see below).
- An Early Adopter Program is available if you are interested in getting an early look at the SDKs (see the UC 14 Metro link below).
Stay tuned for more details.
References and More Information
Chris Mayo’s Recap of the PDC 2009 Session: Microsoft Unified Communications: Developer Platform Futures
UC 14 Metro Early Adopter Program Available
PDC 2009 Sessions:
- Integrating and Extending the Microsoft Office Communicator Experience with Windows Presentation Foundation and Microsoft Silverlight
- Microsoft Unified Communications: Developer Platform Futures
PBX killer, Voice CAL coming to OCS (Network World’s early summary of the next version of OCS)
Microsoft drops new hints on next Communications Server Release (ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley does a write-up)
Interoperability support between Cisco and Microsoft products in unified communications
Microsoft readies Office Communicator 2010 beta
If the left-hand side of your users’ SIP addresses contain a common user attribute in Active Directory such as first name, last name (or both) there is a good chance the SIP address will need to be updated to match any change in the corresponding user attribute(s).
The thought of changing an important attribute like the SIP address made me a bit uneasy and wondering what the impact would be. Specifically, after the SIP address change, would communication still work with another Communicator user who had previously added the old SIP address into their contact list?
After being involved in a deployment that did a few SIP address changes, I am pleased to report that there were no major issues. The seamless communication is made possible by OCS storing user contact lists by unique-id instead of SIP address. Here are some important points to consider however:
- One of the biggest issues that could arise is that Office Communicator integration with Outlook will break if the user’s SIP address does not match the primary SMTP email address in their Outlook profile (see previous post “Office Communicator 2007 and Outlook 2007 Integration Errors”), so the primary email address will need to be updated to avoid this error. If you do update the primary email address to match the new SIP address, ensure that the user’s Outlook profile gets updated. The Microsoft Exchange Autodiscovery service can auto-update the profile if you have Exchange 2007 or 2010 deployed.
- Users will need to restart Communicator after the SIP change. Outlook should also be restarted to ensure integration functions correctly.
Note, the SIP address change was not tested with the OCS Group Chat functionality. If anyone has experience with this, your feedback is appreciated.
In a nutshell, the 32-bit version of the Office 2010 Beta integrated well with both Office Communicator 2007 R2 and the Live Meeting Conferencing Add-In.
The 64-bit version of Office 2010 Beta has some issues with Communicator 2007 R2 and the Live Meeting integration as described below.
Remember – only a 32-bit version of Communicator 2007 R2 and the Live Meeting Add-In is available today (which of course can be installed on an x64-bit O/S via WOW64). I have seen references to Office Communicator 2010 in relation to Office 2010 – I imagine this will have a 64-bit version available.
As a side note, as reported on Dec 16, 2009, it is looking like Office 2010 will not support Window XP 64-bit nor 64-bit Windows 2003.
Communicator Integration
Communicator R2 was able to get free/busy and Out-of-Office information for my Contacts, but I received the infamous “Outlook integration error” and my Presence was not being updated in conjunction with my 64-bit Outlook 2010 calendar. Outlook 2010 would also not display Presence or provide other Communicator integration functionality.
Details of the Outlook integration error were as follows: “There was a problem connecting to Microsoft Office Outlook. Outlook is not installed correctly. Repair or reinstall Outlook, and then update the personal information manager setting on the Personal tab in the Options dialog box”.
I also could not save my Communicator conversation history into Outlook 2010, and despite my best registry tweak attempts, I could not make it work.
Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In Integration
With Outlook 2010 the Meeting functionality (i.e. “Schedule a Meeting”) is available without installing the Live Meeting Conferencing Add-In. For good measure I tried installing it anyway. As with Communicator R2, everything installed and worked fine with the x32-bit version Beta of Office 2010. Also, installing the Add-In extended some meeting functionality – it made available a “Conference Call” toolbar button that which allows you to “Change meeting to an Office 2007 Communicator Call” as shown below:
Trying to install the 32-bit version of the Live Meeting Conferencing Add-In with the 64-bit version of Office 2010 however produces the following error when you attempt to install it on a 64-bit o/s with the 64-bit version of Office 2010 Beta: “Please install Microsoft Office Outlook 2002 or higher and then try again. Note that Outlook 14 64 BIT IS NOT SUPPORTED”. Indeed in the Office 2010 Beta release notes it also says “Note that the 64-bit edition of Office is not compatible with 32-bit Office add-ins”.
Built-In Outlook 2010 Meeting Functionality
Here are some other notes about the meeting functionality in Outlook 2010 (and other Office 2010 applications):
- The “Meeting” functionality is more visible and accessible:
- Easily accessible via the Contact Card when you click or hover-over a contact (see the screen shot below).
- In an Outlook email, there is a “Meeting” button available in the toolbar.
- The Meeting details are auto-populated with the context from where the Meeting request was launched in Outlook (e.g. if a user launches the meeting request from an email recipient, the meeting subject is pre-filled with the email subject and the meeting participants are pre-filled with the email To: and Cc: fields).
 Schedule a Meeting from a Contact Hover-Over in Outlook 2010
After a lengthy work in progress, I am pleased to share a Microsoft Unified Communications Client Deployment script that I think will help some deployments rollout Office Communicator, Office Live Meeting, and the Office Live Meeting Outlook Add-In.
You can view the script, download it, and read about the features here. It is 1500+ lines of VBScript joy wrapped in a Windows Script File (wsf).
The script was born out of the need to deploy Office Communicator, Office Live Meeting, and the Office Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In with a customized configuration for a mid-size OCS deployment without a good central software distribution ability. Using Group Policy to rollout the clients also had issues.
The Deploying Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 document (download “OCS 2007 R2 Deploying Communicator.doc”) gives more details on the various options available for deploying Communicator. The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit (book) also has some good information about deploying the UC clients and a basic script similar to this one. This script was a complete re-write of this one.
The script has many features, including the following:
- Install, or upgrade, Microsoft Office Communicator, Live Meeting, or the Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In for Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 clients.
- Automatically populate the user SIP address to one of three formats: AD email address, the Username environment variable, or Nothing.
- Supports for a Silent or Informational Mode. A Silent mode can be used to run under a GPO for example.
- An option to copy the installation files locally (with or without a progress UI indicator), and install from the local source.
- Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 can be detected and explicitly uninstalled before installing a newer version of Communicator (including any existing desktop shortcuts).
- Configures customized user settings for Communicator and Live Meeting (via local registry entries).
- Supports options to not install Live Meeting or the Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In (for deployments that do not have Live Meeting).
- Detects if Outlook is installed, and will not attempt to install the Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In if Outlook is not installed.
- Detects what version of Outlook is installed, and sets the current user Outlook integration settings accordingly.
- Detects if Outlook is running, and prompts the user to close before installing the Live Meeting Outlook Conferencing Add-In.
- Generates four log files for troubleshooting. One for the main script, and three separate log files for the Communicator, Live Meeting, and the Live Meeting Outlook Add-In installation.
See the Script Customizations for all the possible customizations. While it is highly configurable, treat the script as a starting resource – dig into it, understand it, and customize it for your environment if you want to use it.
The script has been tested and used on many different client operating systems (listed in point #1 above) and is being used in a 3000+ user rollout.
Enjoy!
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Legal The posts and information on this blog are provided "as is" with no warranties and confer no rights. The opinions expressed on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer or anyone else for that matter. All trademarks acknowledged. Copyright 2009 Curtis Johnstone.
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