Office Communication Server - Stress you can handle!

I finally got Office Communications Server 2007 R2 up and running after fiddling around with it for 3 days! I am super excited- the public IM connectivity is functioning just as it was before the upgrade / domain move-

I really dig the new management abilities Microsoft built into OCS 2007 R2. You have an easier to use, more granular ability to control users and the behavior of the pool.. Please take note, however, you DO need to install the management tools on a domain computer in order to provision users. The management tools are a seperate install all together from the core / base roles of operation.

I would have completed this in a day if it was not for a tiny oversight I made on the core installation. MAKE SURE you add the local computer name to the Subject Alternate Name on the certificate for the Pool Cert. My Edge and Front End were not connecting until I regenerated the certificate with the computer name in the SAN.. If it was not for that, the 2 days off and on of troubleshooting would have been non-existent..

Live Communications Server 2005 to Office Communications Server 2007 Migration

In the mood of migrations, I decided to step up into the world of now-- all the way around! After the move to SBS 2008, it seemed natural to upgrade my communications platform. I decided to step up to the plate with OCS 2007 Standard Edition.

Currently, I was running Live Communications Server 2005 Standard Edition with a single Standard Server deployed and a single Access Proxy for federation and remote access. This setup has worked very well for the past ~3 years, so I was hesitant to forge ahead, but hey, why not?!?

I started by bringing up 2 new virtual servers running 2003 Standard Edition x86 (32 bit). Of course I used the Vmware 3.5 platform I just moved over to. The server handling the role of Standard Edition had a single network interface on the corporate network. The new Edge/Access Server is multihomed, one interface on the public internet, the other residing on the corporate network.

I brought Office Communications Server 2007 up along side the Live Communications Server 2005 deployment. After all was installed, I logged into the old 2005 Standard Server and fired up dsa.msc to move the users to the new pool. This worked very well after I granted the correct permissions to the administrator user.

The only gotcha I hit was when I tried to bring my phone online. The new 2007 deployment was set to disallow/block the version of Communicator Phone Edition (CPE) I had downloaded from microsoft. After a quick modification of the client version filter on the Edge and Standard Server, I was able to log in and get to my Real Time Communications!

I already like the performance of OCS 2007 opposed to LCS 2005. The first feature I noticed is the ability to assign your contacts to security levels. This can manipulate what information of yours they can view, and when they can contact you based on your status. Also, the communication seems MUCH faster and more reliable already. Some of my contacts often reported I would miss IM's they sent me with the 2005 system... Hopefully that will go away now!

Now I am on to get the web conferencing server, web access server and A/V server roles going...