Hot off the press from Microsoft. Direct SIP interop document for OCS to CUCM 6.1.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ee862409.aspx
User Group Updates
This week was a really popular week for user group meetings. First off was the Unified Communications Virtual User Group. I actually presented OCS Response Groups. I have to admit, I am not the greatest online presenter so my apologies to those on the call. I get more nervous doing online presentation than in person. Weird. Going virtual for these types of things is a strange occurrence to me as the really value of user groups is the interaction so this was more of a webinar type feel to it. Which is fine, but still not quite the same if you know what I mean.
Next meeting I attended was the Pacific North West UC Doers. Time to celebrate the Exchange 2010 launch. It was an interesting meeting with Yesim Koman from the Exchange product group presenting Exchange IRM - RMS integration. This was an in person meeting held on the Microsoft Redmond Campus. There was a good mix of people from different companies attending. Plenty of swag for those that attended including software, t-shirts and webcams donated by a couple of the different Microsoft sales and marketing groups. UC Doers is a free User Group that receives strong support from Microsoft, partners and regular customer attendees. Look for meeting announcements on my blog for the next quarterly meeting. Thanks to Josh Maher for organizing and hanging in there with the group.
Lastly was the Pacific North West Chapter of the International Nortel Networks User Association. This is something quite different to the other user groups I attended early in the week and was a well-attended event by end users, Nortel and other vendors. This was my first time at a Nortel User Group meeting. It was great to see so many folks working together from different arms of industry and government trying to help each other. This was their annual Christmas get together so I am guessing a little less formal than a regular meeting but everyone was warm and welcoming and I thoroughly enjoyed attending. The Nortel User group chapters are going through some particularly challenging times since the Avaya acquisition. Hopefully this doesn’t end up an amalgamation of Avaya and Nortel user groups just yet as there is still plenty of support for Nortel among customers concerned about where the product lines and support is headed.
I have a unique opportunity in my job that attending user group meetings is beneficial to my position and it also helps me to keep up to date with what’s happening in the industry. Whether you work in the telecom or network sector there is more than likely an end user group out there for you. Since I have worked in the IT industry I have been to Cisco, Linux, Microsoft and Nortel user groups and all had something to offer. It really doesn’t take much effort to attend one of these meetings so I encourage everyone to get out there, network and support your local user groups.
Next meeting I attended was the Pacific North West UC Doers. Time to celebrate the Exchange 2010 launch. It was an interesting meeting with Yesim Koman from the Exchange product group presenting Exchange IRM - RMS integration. This was an in person meeting held on the Microsoft Redmond Campus. There was a good mix of people from different companies attending. Plenty of swag for those that attended including software, t-shirts and webcams donated by a couple of the different Microsoft sales and marketing groups. UC Doers is a free User Group that receives strong support from Microsoft, partners and regular customer attendees. Look for meeting announcements on my blog for the next quarterly meeting. Thanks to Josh Maher for organizing and hanging in there with the group.
Lastly was the Pacific North West Chapter of the International Nortel Networks User Association. This is something quite different to the other user groups I attended early in the week and was a well-attended event by end users, Nortel and other vendors. This was my first time at a Nortel User Group meeting. It was great to see so many folks working together from different arms of industry and government trying to help each other. This was their annual Christmas get together so I am guessing a little less formal than a regular meeting but everyone was warm and welcoming and I thoroughly enjoyed attending. The Nortel User group chapters are going through some particularly challenging times since the Avaya acquisition. Hopefully this doesn’t end up an amalgamation of Avaya and Nortel user groups just yet as there is still plenty of support for Nortel among customers concerned about where the product lines and support is headed.
I have a unique opportunity in my job that attending user group meetings is beneficial to my position and it also helps me to keep up to date with what’s happening in the industry. Whether you work in the telecom or network sector there is more than likely an end user group out there for you. Since I have worked in the IT industry I have been to Cisco, Linux, Microsoft and Nortel user groups and all had something to offer. It really doesn’t take much effort to attend one of these meetings so I encourage everyone to get out there, network and support your local user groups.
Why using the same SIP domain for Tandberg OCS interop can be hazardous to your health
An interesting point came up this week while in a discussion about using the same SIP domain when doing interop between OCS and Tandberg, it can be a bad idea in a large environments. This is of course related to using the Tandberg VCS. If you are registering Tandberg endpoints directly to OCS this is not an issue. When you start looking at the configuration of OCS for VCS interop you will understand why this has the potential to be an issue.
When you add a static route, as I have like in my screen shot, this is a blanket static route that has no filtering etc so when I send an invite with the domain VCS.domain it goes to the intended VCS specified in the IP address portion. Now if this domain is the same as my OCS domain, guess what, every invite generated by OCS has the potential to get sent to the VCS and not just to the intended system registered to OCS. In a small environment this is not such a problem and the VCS will work just fine but in a larger environment this could create a significant load on the VCS. I have not tested for this behavior myself but it certainly makes sense that this would indeed happen.
This also brings up another couple of points. When dealing with larger environment, rarely are the VTC and OCS team the same group of people. So it makes good sense to have separation virtually between the two environments using different SIP domains. Although this doesn’t quite fit in the UC model of unifying your environment this does ease things like troubleshooting and help create a demarcation point. You may think I am crazy saying that the same organization requires a demarcation point between teams but it’s an unfortunate reality. I have seen this quite a few times now in organization where they want to deploy UC but instead of the telecom, VTC and collaboration teams coming together to work jointly on a project they create a third silo for UC and another team is born. I have heard a telecom manager say, “You have to talk to our UC guy we (telecom) don’t deal with that stuff”.
So anyway, till next week.
When you add a static route, as I have like in my screen shot, this is a blanket static route that has no filtering etc so when I send an invite with the domain VCS.domain it goes to the intended VCS specified in the IP address portion. Now if this domain is the same as my OCS domain, guess what, every invite generated by OCS has the potential to get sent to the VCS and not just to the intended system registered to OCS. In a small environment this is not such a problem and the VCS will work just fine but in a larger environment this could create a significant load on the VCS. I have not tested for this behavior myself but it certainly makes sense that this would indeed happen.
This also brings up another couple of points. When dealing with larger environment, rarely are the VTC and OCS team the same group of people. So it makes good sense to have separation virtually between the two environments using different SIP domains. Although this doesn’t quite fit in the UC model of unifying your environment this does ease things like troubleshooting and help create a demarcation point. You may think I am crazy saying that the same organization requires a demarcation point between teams but it’s an unfortunate reality. I have seen this quite a few times now in organization where they want to deploy UC but instead of the telecom, VTC and collaboration teams coming together to work jointly on a project they create a third silo for UC and another team is born. I have heard a telecom manager say, “You have to talk to our UC guy we (telecom) don’t deal with that stuff”.
So anyway, till next week.
Office Communications Server Cumulative Server Update Installer
Installing updates on OCS if you were not running the Windows update service was quite a task especially if you have over 30 OCS servers. Well there is a new method called the Cumulative Server Update Installer that was release with October’s cumulative updates. Rui Silva has done a great job describing the three methods available to do OCS updates at his blog.
Also there is a new update location for OCS well worth checking out that has the latest patches available for OCS and associated platforms.
Also there is a new update location for OCS well worth checking out that has the latest patches available for OCS and associated platforms.
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