OCS R2 Administrative Tools - Quick Facts

As many OCS 2007 R1 deployments move to OCS 2007 R2, mixed deployments with both OCS R1 and OCS R2 pools are becoming more common.

Here are some notable reminders about the OCS  R2 Administrative Tools in a mixed deployment that you should know about:

1. The R1 and R2 Admin Tools cannot be installed side-by-side together on the same machine.
2. The R1 and R2 Admin Tools can only administer their respective OCS server versions). For example, the R2 Administrative Tools cannot be used against an R1 pool.
3. The R2 Admin Tools are not supported on a Windows XP O/S.  Windows 2003 SP2, Windows 2008, and Windows Vista SP1 are supported.  For Vista and Windows 2008 there are some pre-requisites you must install first (follow the links when you go to install).
4. Although OCS 2007 R2 is only supported on a 64-bit platform, the 32-bit Administrative Tools are available in the \Support\i386 directory of the R2 installation media.
5. Active Directory Users & Computers is not automatically extended for R2 management (e.g. Communications Tab) like the OCS R1 administrative tools did.
6. The OCS 2007 R2 administrative tools are no longer installed on the OCS server itself as part of the regular installation (except for Group Chat). You can manually install them by using the same Deployment Wizard that you use to install Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (there is a hyperlink in the right-pane of the wizard).
7. If you want to install the R2 admin tools without the Deployment Wizard, they are located in the \Setup\amd64\Setup directory.
8. When Microsoft releases updates to OCS 2007, usually this includes updates to the administrative tools and the core components, so stay up-to-date.
9. Note: the OCS admin tools require a compatible version of the Core Components (OCSCore.msi) be installed.