I have setup a Paper.Li weekly newsletter of news on UC and in particular Lync. You can see it: here. You can also subscribe (free) and get an abbreviated version in your mail box every Monday Morning. The mail can be clicked to get to the full content. The language is set to English, with coverage from around the globe.
In Lync, and indeed with almost any VOIP product, call quality can vary. This variation can be caused by a number of factors, including network delay, jitter, packet loss, and under powered PCs. Diagnosing the causes is difficult if you don’t have all the facts.
Microsoft has issues a pair of new tools< PreCall Diagnostics Tool, that run on Win 7 (desktop) and Win 8 (as a metro/modern app). You can get the Desktop application here, and the modern app here.
To understand more about the tool(s) and what the out means, take a look at an excellent blog article by Byron Spurlock.
Microsoft’s Lync server has a great feature called E911 – Emergency calling mainly for the UK and Canada. I teach Lync and find this topic to be of only minor interest in the UK and Europe mainly because we do not have E911 service over here (yet, anyway!).
Gary Williams has just published a great blog article entitled Is it OK to Place a Test Call to Emergency Services. His answer is Yes and he goes about telling how to do it. I have to say, I’ve always been quite nervous about testing out calls to 999 – and have only twice every had to call it for real.
But Gary’s article makes it clear that yes you can do this and also makes the good point that not testing it can be life threatening if it doesn’t work. He sets out how to do it in the article and it’s pretty simple. Gary also notes another potential gotcha – Lync will add a leading “+” to the number (e.g. if you dial 999, Lync ‘dials’ +999). Thus it’s vital that you have your routes are set up expecting this.
I just love how the market is creating little useful add-ins to increases the functionality and value of Lync. The most recent one I’ve found is a product called SuperToast. It’s made by Modality Systems and you can read about it over on Modality’s web site.
SuperToast is a Lync application that notifies a Lync user of any missed instant messages and telephone or video calls. If an instant message is not acknowledged within a certain timeframe, or a call goes unanswered, SuperToast pops up a window in the centre of your screen, notifying you of any missed items. It stays there until you click it away and add any subsequent missed IM’s or calls to the list.
The value here should be obvious. For all too many IT Pros, and Information Workers, it is all too easy to miss an incoming instant message or call from a colleague, partner or even a customer. Combine that with the difficulty of being able to see when or what IM’s and calls you have missed. SuperToast avoids important queries going unnoticed.
One nice feature of Lync (and OCS before that) is the Server’s ability to provide clients with details of errors that occurred whilst the server was attempting to process a SIP command sent from the client. This is done by extending SIP to enable both client and server to report errors to each other. A new SIP header, Diagnostics, is used to report errors The idea is that if the server has an error, the client can get more information and possibly provide better information both to the end user and to any help desk support engineer.
This extension, snappily known as MS-OCER, an hot it is used is defined in the Client Error Reporting Protocol document you can download from Microsoft at: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/F/16F4E321-AA6B-4FA3-8AD3-E94C895A3C97/%5bMS-OCER%5d.pdf
The PDF file, which runs to just under 200 pages, describes The details of the protocol plus full details of every Error ID including the reason for the error, are included in this document. This is a document that is likely to be of great value when you are troubleshooting!
Interestingly, although the document was last updated last November, there appear to be no Lync 2013 specific messages – only those for Lync 2010 and earlier. I assume that the Lync 2013 errors are the same as for Lync 2010, but there’s nothing I can see in the document to confirm that.
As much as we’d all like utterly reliable software – history suggests it’s not likely to happen at least in my lifetime. Read Fred Brookes book Mythical Man Month: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month – while it describes things Brookes saw during his time at IBM working on OS/360 (in the 1960s), the book continues to be highly relevant. Brookes observes that in any complex system there are a certain irreducible number of errors – as true today as in the era Brookes writes about. Worse, all attempts to fix the observed errors tends to result in the introduction of other, new, errors. So we live with the reality that all complex software will have bugs and that at some point we may be impacted.
For Windows IT Pros, one great source of information on bugs and solutions is Microsoft’s Top Support Solutions pages (see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/topsupportsolutions/) over on the TechNet site. For Lync administrators, the URL is: http://blogs.technet.com/b/topsupportsolutions/archive/tags/lync/ which sets out top solutions for Lync which was last updated late November 2013, so is relatively up to date.
If you are having problems with Lync, consult these references to see if your problem is one of the well known variety with an equally well known solution.
In the LinkedIn Microsoft Lync Server 2010 group, MVP Pat Richard posted a link to the Lync Improvement Suggestions site. From this site, the community can make suggestions for new features in Lync, and can vote on the usefulness. The theory is that great ideas bubble up to the top. The site also shows those ideas that have been completed.
I think this is a super idea. The only downside is the disclaimer at the top of the web site page: “NOT SUPPORTED BY MICROSOFT”. Nevertheless,knowing how good Microsoft is at following sites like this, it would be amazing if they didn’t at least take a look at the popular suggestions. Of course, if you know the current product, many of the popular ideas are not really a surprise: Better response groups, Requests for take control of the client (for the help desk) and many more. Many of these seem ‘obvious’ – we’ll see how many get implemented.
Yet another security vulnerability in Windows, Office and Lync has been discovered that could enable remote code execution. The vulnerability is triggered if the user views content that contains specially adapted TIFF files. The vulnerability was first noted in security advisory 2896666 published in early November.
The fix is Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-096. To resolve the fix, there are a number of potential patches that need to be applied – these now appear to have shipped via Automatic Update. So for home systems, if you are using Lync, or office or later versions of Windows, make sure your systems are all patched (Microsoft/Windows update should do the trick). If you are an an oganisation that managed software updates, make sure the updates for this security bulletin are applied.
For those of us in the Lync world, the release of a Lync client for mobile phones has been long awaited. Although Microsoft released Lync 2010 to the market over a year ago, there has been no mobile client up till now. The lack of a mobile client has been a point some Microsoft competitors have been quick to jump on. But starting earlier this week, the client is slowly rolling out on 5 key platforms (Windows phone, iPhone, iPad, Android and Nokia Symbian). Thus far, Microsoft has only released Lync for the Windows Phone – the others are shown as ‘coming soon’ on the Mobile Clients for Microsoft Lync web page.
Microsoft cites 4 key features of the new Lync mobile client:
To the dismay of some, there is no VOIP client – all phone calls to/from the device have to be made over the cellular network, but Call from work and One Number reach do make that a little less expensive. It appears that the Call via Work feature will not be shipped with Android.
Like so many things Microsoft, the client is not something you can just load from the relevant store and have it work – you do need some work on your Lync implementation and need to install the latest cumulative updates (CU4 in particular) to get the necessary services up and running that support the motile client.
These requirements are spelt out in yet another TechNet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh690988.aspx. You will need to do some work against your DNS servers to ensure automatic discovery and sign-in works properly. Although this is pretty straightforward, it is work that needs to be planned for and carried out. If you are an Office 365 user and Microsoft is managing your DNS, the work appears to be already done. I host DNS externally to Office 365 but it took me just a few minutes to adjust my DNS settings as needed. You also have to install and configure the mobility service (in CU4), and update your voice policy to support use of the mobile client.
One important gotcha that might be easy to overlook: You need to include certain (new and additional) SAN entries on your key servers. In particular you need to adjust SAN entries on the certificates in your Director pool, your Front End Pool and the reverse proxy. If you use public certificates for any of these systems, you may have to buy an updated certificate for the RP system.
In closing, it’s worth noting that the mobile client does NOT provide 100% of the features of the Lync desktop client. You can see a good comparison of the various clients at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh691004.aspx. Some features that are NOT provided by the mobile client (as documented in TechNet) include:
I can’t wait to get my hands on the client and to use it against my Office 365 account (tfl@reskit.onmicrosoft.com). From all I’ve heard from those who have the client – it does what it says it does and thus far appears stable and resilient. I look forward to using the client - As an iPhone user, I will have to patient. After all – I’ve been waiting 14 months or so for this client a few more days wait is not the end of the world! It will make a nice Christmas present!
The Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit is a technical reference to Lyn Server and extends the planning, deploying and managing documentation in Microsoft’s Lync Technical Library.
After a number of months in preparation, the Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit has been published – and you can download it for free from Microsoft. The book has 18 chapters and you can download each one from the Microsoft Download Center. And from the same page, you can also get a single zip file with all the documents.
If you are interested in Lync, then these documents are a must read.
If you are an IT Pro managing Lync, you know that Lync has a key dependency on SQL databases. For the most part, you don’t need to know the details of what databases Lync actually uses but at times that knowledge can be very useful, like during troubleshooting! As a Lync (and OCS) trainer, I know a fair bit about how Lync (and OCS before it) makes use of SQL, but there are details that, until now, I wasn’t totally clear on,
Curtis Johnstone has written a great article on The Lync Server Databases which covers the databases used and what they are used for plus some other relevant information about SQL server (and what versions are needed).
I recommend reading this article (and bookmarking it) to learn more about this topic.
One of the neat aspects of the Lync Server 2010 Resource is that it’s being published online, chapter by chapter as each chapter is finished. I suspect there will eventually be a physical book, in the meantime, Lync admins can get the deep technical and management info direct from the web.
Today, the latest chapter, Troubleshooting Lync, was released. To get this and the other released chapters, navigate to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8c64a1e1-f0b3-479c-a265-e480875c61d8&displaylang=en and download from there. You can download each of the 7 chapters published so one by one, or get a 12MB ZIP file with all the chapters.
If you are using Lync, or considering it, these downloads are mandatory reading.
The folks behind the Lync Server 2010 PowerShell blog have another fun wheeze on: The PowerShell Challenge. The idea of this contest is simple: each week, the Blog team present 4 things and you need to figure out which is The Odd One Out (or as they put it, One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others). You can read up on the rules here.
The PowerShell challenge has been going for a few weeks, and there are still 4 folks with perfect scores (naturally, I am one of those). But you can still join in the fun and compete in this week’s contest. Who knows, the top runners might have a bad week and you could end up winning the competition. But it’s not whether you win or lose – I am finding this contest very useful in helping me to get better familiar with the Cmdlets.
To see a summary of the past challenges (and answers), plus this weeks’ challenge, see: http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/p/otherschallengearchive.aspx.
Over at Www.PowerShell.Com, there’s a new forum: PowerShell for Microsoft Lync Server. This is a forum where you can ask any and all your questions around using PowerShell and Lync Server 2010. As you may know, Lync Server 2010 follows in the foot steps of Exchange and other MS server applications in offering a complete PowerShell Admin experience.
For those of you who are getting into Lync, your basic administration can be done from the Lync Server Control Panel (a sliver light application that replaced the MMC console used in Office Communications Server and earlier versions of what we now call Lync. But for heavy duty admin, PowerShell, and the 543 cmdlets in the Lync Module are going to be your focus. I teach Lync in the UK and know that many of the admins I’ve taught thus far are going to struggle with PowerShell as many of them have little or no PowerShell background (with too many still living in the land where administration must mean doing it at the GUI).
So if you are getting into Lync, and are having trouble doing a specific thing – come on down. If you are a seasoned OCS admin, and a bit unsure on PowerShell – definitely come on over and ask your questions.
With the Lync Server 2010 RC available, the details of what it will take to run Lync in production are emerging. One really nice change from OCS 2007 is that Lync is now fully supported when virtualised. With OCS 2007, only some roles were supported, although anecdotal evidence suggested OCS would work OK virtualised – the issue was more with the client.
This means that all major workloads, including presence, IM, conferencing and Enterprise Voice can be run in a virtual environment. This includes Standard and Enterprise editions. There are some restrictions on virtualisation platforms though, only VMware and Hyper-V are supported. For both virtualisation platforms, only Serve 2008 R2 is supported. And for Hyper-V, you must also run the host as Server 2008 R2. Microsoft will support virtualisations using SE to support up to around 2000 users and Enterprise Edition pools supporting up to 40k users. Edge servers can also be virtualised.
For Hype-V at least, the hosting requirements will significant: 8 Core 2.27Ghz processors with 16GB+ of ram and fast disks (particularly for your back end SQL servers). With virtualisation, your overall consolidation ratio is around 3:1 A suitably speced out host machine will support around 4 Front End servers, or 4 A/V Conferencing Servers for a user base of up to 40k users. For full functionality, you’d also want at least Directors (2 Director roles can be co-located on a single Hyper-V host) and two Edge servers (also co-located on a single VM host). You can also co-locate your Monitoring and Archiving server roles.
You can also virtualise your SQL Server back end database, but in a large Enterprise environment, you may just want to keep your back end cluster as a pair of real servers. You can of course, co-locate two SQL Server VMs on a single host to serve as your fail over back end cluster. Although this only provides resilience in the case the guest OS or applications go down!
The total level of consolidation in such a scenairo would be from around 19 servers, down to around 6 or 7 large hosts machines. You’d then need to consider your Mediation Server requirements! To some degree, the number of mediation servers required will be based on your requirements (how many PSTN ingress/egress locations do you have and what sort of gateways are you using). With Lync 2010’s Media Bypass facilities (and suitable PSTN gateways!) you could co-locate up to around 4 Mediation Servers on a single host. My guess, although I do not have the means to test it) is that you could probably support more Mediation Servers on a given host, depending on the Gateway architecture
Here are the resources I’ve found so far. I am updating this regularly as I find more stuff!
Last Update: 13:15 18September 2010
Background Information
Here is some background information on Lync Server 2010 and Lync 2010:
Lync Software Components
Microsoft has released some product bits of the product as separate downloads:
Microsoft Blogs
Non MS Blog Posts
Podcasts
Planning Tools
Product Documentation
Microsoft has released several white papers on the http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/default.aspx site, including:
Pricing and Licensing
Lync Server 2010 follows a Server/Client Access License (CAL) model whereby a Lync Server 2010 license is required for each operating system environment running Lync Server 2010 and a CAL is required for each user or device accessing the Lync Server.
Support
At present, there’s no formal support for Lync 2010. At present, the two places where you can find more information are Microsoft’s OCS 2007 Forums:
Webcasts – CS14 at TechEd
Microsoft presented CS14 topics at TechEd North America earlier in 2010. The presentations and slide decks are all available for download and use. These presentations talk about CS’14’ – but aside from the branding, the details are the same!
Press and Release PR Coverage
As often happens, much the industry found out about Lync Server’s public debut from non-Microsoft sources, quickly followed by the MS presentation. Here is some of the press background if you are interested.
Email me any changes or updates and I’ll try to keep this list up to date!
[UPDATES TO ORIGINAL POSTING]
Thanks to May Jo Foley’s piece in ZDNet, I see Microsoft has just shipped a release candidate for Lync Server 2010. Lync, formerly known as Communications Server ‘14’ is the successor to Office Communications Server. The name, said to connect link and sync, is important in that it simplifies the branding with much shorter names for the constituent components.
Lync combines presence, instant messaging, conferencing and telephony – allowing you to simplify communications and in due course reduce the costs of running your legacy phone system. Presence enables your users to know what each other is doing thus simplifying communications. If I want to chat to someone, and I see they are in a meeting, I know the call would be wasted. Combined with presence, IM enables fast peer to peer and sometimes peer to multiple peer communication. Lync 2010’s voice capabilities should enable many companies to adopt the product as their main PBX.
At the time of writing, Microsoft has put up the RC for download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=29366ba5-498f-4d21-bc3e-0b4e8ba58fb1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MicrosoftDownloadCenter+%28Microsoft+Download+Center%29#tm (don’t you love the snappy urls?). This page also has links to more Lync Server 2010 information, but these links do not yet exist. No doubt these will get put up shortly.
The download is just over 1.5GB and contains both the Standard and Enterprise Editions of Lync 2010. In keeping with recent platform changes, this RC (and the final product in due course) ships as 64-bit only which means you need to be running a 64-bit OS (and here I recommend running Server 2008 R2!).
Over the coming weeks, I’ll blog more about the functions and features of this cool product. Not least of which is the PowerShell interface.
