About Me

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This is a blog for John Weber. One of my joys in life is helping others get ahead in life. Content here will be focused on that from this date forward. John was a Skype for Business MVP (2015-2018) - before that, a Lync Server MVP (2010-2014). I used to write a variety of articles (https://tsoorad.blogspot.com) on technical issues with a smattering of other interests. I have a variety of certifications dating back to Novell CNE and working up through the Microsoft MCP stack to MCITP multiple times. FWIW, I am on my third career - ex-USMC, retired US Army. I have a fancy MBA. The opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone.

2012/09/11

Assign Lync Policies to Users According to AD Group

 

Fellow MVP Pat Richards just published an extremely nice bit of work to automate the granting of CS policy by AD groups….

http://www.ehloworld.com/1348

It looks very comprehensive and well done.  I will be giving this a whirl in the next few days – and I hope to never have to write my own bits of script to accomplish this again.

NICE!

YMMV.

CSClientVersionPolicy

As we know, we can limit/control what clients we allow to login to our Lync Servers.  However, if you look at the Client Version Policy, it can be a bit cryptic:

image

What the heck is an RTC or a UCCP? How to determine that?  Well, chapter 3 of the Lync 2010 Resource Kit – Client Administration – has a handy chart:

Client Name

User Agent

Lync 2010, Office Communicator

OC

Lync Web App, Communicator Web Access

CWA

Lync 2010 Phone Edition, Office Communicator Phone

OCPhone

Communicator Phone Edition Platform

CPE

Unified Communications Platform

UCCP

Lync 2010 Attendee

AOC

Live Meeting Add-In

LiveMeetingAddins

Office Live Meeting

LMC

Windows Messenger

WM

Real-time Communications Client

RTC

That explains a lot, but I notice that there are no MAC clients listed – and maybe I want to allow the newer MAC 2011 client to connect, but not the older one??  How to do that?

Well, as it turns out, the User Agent for Mac is "MC" and Communicator for Mac 2011 is 13.* and Lync for Mac 2011 is 14.*  I assume (BIG ASSUME) that a newer MAC client may be forthcoming in the next Office for MAC rev, and it will be a 15.* – at any rate, now that we know this, we can write a new filter to trap for the 13.* but allow the 14.* – something like this.  You may wish to change your rules order, they are evaluated from the top down.

image

YMMV

Lync 2013 Client Installs

Now that Lync 2013 is a full member of Office 2013, the following bears some attention if your organization decides to go this route far!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj204827(v=ocs.15).aspx

Note that things become a lot more ORK-ish. In some ways, much better than Lync 2010, in some ways a bit more tedious to get JUST the Lync client installed.

YMMV

2012/09/05

Lync 2013 SQL outline

 

Lync 2013 has a lot of new(ish) features. To me, the interesting ones are on the backend support, how HA is accomplished, server pairing, and things like that.  Recently, I had to chase down the specifics of the new backend SQL support and how it fits into the new architecture.

To that end, I submit the following bullets regarding Lync 2013 and the SQL support.

  • Each pool member has a local SQL Express running.
  • Each pool member synchronizes with other pool members.
  • One pool member is active for the backup service and synchronizes with the active pool member in the paired pool.
  • Each pool member synchronizes with the backend full SQL also.
  • The full SQL does NOT synchronize with the paired pool full SQL.
  • If your paired pool (Pool A) contains the Central Management Store (CMS), then when you pair Pool A with Pool B, Pool B will have a backup copy of the CMS.  Only one of these CMS copies is "master" at any one time. If you need to failover Pool A to Pool B, then you need to move the CMS master to Pool B using the invoke-csmanagementserverfailover cmdlet.  For more information see this link.
  • Each full SQL for each pool can also provide an archiving, monitoring, and Persistent Chat database.
  • Persistent Chat uses Log Shipping to and stretches its’ pool across sites to provide for resiliency.
  • Paired pools are also backup registrars for each other (not really a SQL thing, but an interesting point before you go pairing pools).

But each full SQL could fail, leaving those services unavailable.

  • To answer this HA requirement, Lync 2013 can use SQL mirror to provide for intrasite High Availability - not to be confused with the ability of the paired pool to assume full services if needed.

Clear as mud?

YMMV

Lync Server 2013 Office Web Apps

As you undoubtedly know by now, Lync 2013 has a component called Office Web Apps Server that is required for presentation of PPT in conferences. In the course of developing the design document for my current project, I am learning more than I wanted to about Office Web Apps Server.

These links are for the Office Web Apps Server PREVIEW that fits up under Office 2013.

Office Web Apps Server Preview

Article

Description

Overview of Office Web Apps Server Preview

Learn about how Office Web Apps Server Preview provides browser-based Office functionality to on-premises hosts in your organization.

Plan Office Web Apps Server Preview

Learn about Office Web Apps Server Preview requirements, such as HTTPS, certificates, virtualization, load balancing, topologies, and security.

Deploy Office Web Apps Server Preview

Learn how to deploy Office Web Apps Server Preview on-premises.

Technical reference for Office Web Apps Server 2013 Preview

Find technical reference articles for Office Web Apps Server Preview. These include help for the OfficeWebApps Windows PowerShell cmndlets.

You may also be interested in this link: Lync Server 2013 and Office Web Apps

YMMV

test 02 Feb

this is a test it’s only a test this should be a picture