By default Lync Server 2010 announces when users join or leave a dial-in meeting by name. For example, "Pilar Ackerman has joined the conference." Kind of cool, but it can get annoying when attendees join or leave in the middle of the meeting.
You can configure Lync Server to instead play a simple tone instead or turn entry/exit announcements off altogether.
To set the new default entry/exit announcements to a tone, run the following cmdlet from your Lync back end server:
I decided it's time to replace my old Hyper-V server at home
with a new one that's faster and can run more VMs. I've decided again to build
it myself from OEM parts so I can get exactly what I want at a right price. This
article contains my parts list and my reasons for choosing what I did.
Hopefully, this will help you with your own home lab.
I host my private cloud network on a Windows Server 2008 R2
Hyper-V host server. Hyper-V is perfect for my environment because it allows
me to run workgroup applications (Exchange Edge Transport and IIS) directly on
the host, as well as host my virtual domain servers.
My current Hyper-V server is an AMD x64 dual core rig with
16GB RAM and two SATA drives, one for the OS and another for VMs. I built it
about 3 years ago when I was on the Windows Server 2008 TAP and it has served
me well. But with Windows Server 8 and Exchange 15 right around the corner, I
wanted to be sure I had the capabilities of running these new versions.
My Design Requirements
As with most customers, I have competing requirements for
this new server:
Minimum of 4 cores
Windows Server 8 capable. Hyper-V for Windows 8 requires hypervisor-ready processors with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT), as reported by Microsoft at BUILD.
32GB of fast DDR3 RAM
Must support SATA III 6Gb/s drives
Must have USB 3.0 ports for future portable devices
Must be quiet. This server is sitting next to me in my office (aka, the sunroom) and I don't want to hear it at all.
Low power requirements
Small form factor
Budget: ~$1,000 USD
My RAM requirements drove most of this design. Since this
would be based on a desktop motherboard (server mobos are too big and ECC RAM
is too expensive), I first looked for 4x8GB (32GB) DDR3 RAM. Then I looked for
a small mobo that would accept that much RAM, then a processor for that mobo.
Here's my parts list, including links to where I purchased each
item and the price I paid:
Rosewill RX-C200P 2.5" SSD / HDD Plastic Mounting Kit for
3.5" Drive Bay
$4.99
NewEgg
Total: $925.91
[Update: See my comparison of Western Digital Caviar Black and Green drives. The trade off is ~$100 and more noise for better performance.]
I was a little worried about the Komputerbay RAM. I've
never heard of them before, but they offer a lifetime warranty and 32GB DDR3
1333 (PC3 10666) RAM was $54 cheaper than what I could find at NewEgg. In the end I'm
very pleased with my decision.
I chose different sources for the best price. NewEgg is my
go-to vendor for most items. They charge sales tax in California, but I have a
ShopRunner account that gives
me free 2-day shipping on all these items. Amazon was the smart choice for the
bigger ticket items since they don't charge tax and I could get them delivered
with a 30 day free trial of Prime 2-day shipping. Not to mention the fact that
I had a $500 Amazon gift card that I won at TechEd 2011 from my good friends at
Vision Solutions! TigerDirect
was the only source for this great AeroCool micro ATX cube computer case.
All the items were delivered the same day and started putting
it together that night. Careful assembly took about 90 minutes and everything
went together perfectly.
It's a Geek Christmas!
All the parts freed from their cardboard prisons
The only other item I added was a dual port Intel PRO/1000
MT Server Adapter that I already had. I also used L-bend right angle SATA
cables instead of the two that came with the Intel motherboard, due to the
short clearance between the PSU and the back of the drives (I knew this going
in).
The innovative AeroCool M40 micro ATX case opens up likea book for easy access. The power supply, hard drives and DVD drive(s) are
in the top half and everything else is down below. It includes a nearly silent
120mm front fan and has room for one more on the top rear section and two 80mm
fans on the bottom rear section. I added a single silent 80mm fan on the
bottom to push warm air out. The case temperature has never gone above 26.4C
and it's completely silent.
View from above showing the Antec PSU, the 3.5" and 5.25" drive cages and the unused PSU cabling
View from the hinged side, showing motherboard placement
I'm using the OCZ 120GB SATA III SSD drive for the operating
system and pagefile, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise for now. I'll upgrade the
server to Windows Server 8 when it goes RTM. In the meantime, I'll build and
test beta versions as VMs. I have to say that this SSD drive was one of the
best choices for my new system. It's blistering fast! Windows Server 2008 R2
SP1 installed in just 6 minutes!! Take a look at the video below to see that
it takes only 20 seconds to get to a logon screen from a cold start, and half
of that time is the for the BIOS POST!
The Intel I5 4-core Sandy Bridge processor has amazing
graphics built in. I'm able to run Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Aero theme at
1920x1080 HD resolution with no difference in performance. It's possible to
overclock this system, but it's plenty fast for me and I value stability over
speed. I love the fact that it draws only 65W! This not only saves
electricity, it keeps the case cool which lowers the cooling requirements.
The bottom half with the case split open. The I5-2400s CPU came with this huge low profile CPU cooler.
As a desktop motherboard, the Intel DH67BL motherboard came
with drivers that did not work out of the box with Windows Server 2008 R2. I
downloaded the latest drivers from Intel and most installed fine. The only
items I had trouble with were the built-in Intel 82579V Gigabit network adapter
and the integrated Intel HD Graphics drivers. Intel "crippled" the
NIC driver installer so that it won't install on a server platform. See this article which
explains how to re-enable it. The video driver installed most of the way, but
the installer crashed when trying to register a DLL. It was able to install again
fine after a restart.
I also used a Western Digital Green 2TB SATA III drive for
storage of my Hyper-V VMs. I've always used Western Digital drives and I've
never had a problem with them. The WD Green line saves power, runs cool and
quiet, and delivers 6 Gb/s performance.
Photo of the completed server. I placed a DVD on top to for scale.
This is by far the fastest server I've ever worked on, bar
none. I'm extremely happy with it. I haven't bothered running any benchmarks*
on it – I just know that it's fast enough for my needs and has plenty of RAM so
I can run more VMs.
I hope this article helps
you to build your own home lab server. Please let me know if you have any
questions.
If you have the Lync 2010 client installed it will automatically launch when you click to join a meeting using the meeting URL. If you don't have Lync 2010 installed you will see a Microsoft Lync 2010 join page similar to the following:
From this web page you can join the meeting using your browser (Lync Web App), download the thick Lync 2010 Attendee client, or use your OCS 2007 Communicator (with reduced functionality) if it's installed.
Lync Web App is supported on multiple Windows and Mac platforms (see Lync Web App Supported Platforms for details). It also requires the Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in version 4.0 or better installed. Lync Web App will download various ActiveX components as needed to add functionality, such as screen sharing. Previously, Lync Web App used to be called the reach client.
The Lync 2010 Attendee client is a thick client (it must be downloaded and installed), so it requires rights to install software. The Lync 2010 Attendee is very similar to the Lync 2010 client, but it does not allow you to create buddy lists or create meetings. Both Lync Web App and Lync 2010 Attendee allow you to join as guests or with your corporate credentials.
As mentioned earlier, the Lync 2010 client will automatically launch if it is installed when you click the "Join Online Meeting" URL. However, you may find that you need to use Lync Web App instead. Maybe your want to demo the web join page, above, or you're in an environment where the firewall blocks access using the Lync 2010 client. To do this, simply add ?sl= to the meeting URL. For example:
https://meet.extrateam.com/jeff/3MK1BW1F?sl=
Viola! The Lync Client will not launch and you can choose to run Lync Web App.
Now that Microsoft has released the Lync 2010 mobile clients for Windows Phone 7, Android and Apple IOS devices, you're probably wondering how to deploy the Lync 2010 Mobility Service. Normally that's something I might cover here on this blog, but Lync MVP Jeff Schertz has already done an excellent job on his blog.
Microsoft is planning to release the Lync mobile client for various platforms soon. The PowerPoint presentation below come from a Microsoft presentation
this morning. Microsoft confirmed that this information is not NDA and can be shared with others, so here you go!
Lync Mobility will provide a mobile client for Windows Phone 7, iPhone, iPad, Android and Symbian devices. There is no ETA for these clients at this time. Microsoft is dependent on the various partner marketplaces for actual client availability.
Whenever you launch the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Control Panel you are prompted for credentials, even if you select the check box to "Remember my credentials".
You can easily make Lync Control Panel remember your username and password by adding the Lync Server pool FQDN to your Local Intranet site. Here's how:
Make note of the Lync Server pool FQDN listed in the Windows Security dialog box (in the example above, LYNC1.theguillets.com).
Open Internet Explorer and go to https:\\<Lync Server FQDN>. You'll probably get a "HTTP Error 403.14 - Forbidden" page -- don't worry about that.
Click Tools | Internet Options in IE.
On the Security tab, click Local intranet and then the Sites button.
Click Advanced on the Local Intranet dialog box.
Add the Lync Server FQDN to Local intranet, as shown below:
Click Close and OK twice. Then close Internet Explorer.
Now Lync Control Panel will use the credentials of the logged on user, using Windows Authentication. If you want to logoff and use another set of credentials, click "Sign Out" in Lync Control Panel and then "Sign in as a different user".
Microsoft Exchange and Lync Server use TXT and SRV records in DNS to publish domain and service connection point information. Exchange 2007 and 2010 use TXT records for federation and Sender Protection Framework (SPF) records. Lync 2010 uses SRV records for automatic client sign in and protocol configuration. Often these records are published in both internal and external DNS zones. It's important to know that these records are configured properly and have propagated throughout the Internet. This article explains how to use the Windows built-in tool, nslookup, to confirm the records.
Nslookup can be used both as a single line query or in interactive mode. It normally returns results for A or CNAME (alias) records. To view TXT, SRV, or MX records, you must change the nslookup type. The following single line query looks up the TXT records for a domain:
nslookup -q=txt domain.com
This example shows all the TXT records for the domain theguillets.com:
Note that this query was run against the primary DNS server, 192.168.1.1. What if you want to run the query against another external DNS server? Try the following command:
nslookup -q=txt domain.com 8.8.8.8
where 8.8.8.8 is the FQDN or IP address of the DNS server you want to query. 8.8.8.8 is one of the Google DNS servers and returns the following:
This is a good way to check that your DNS data is propagating across the Internet. On a side note, I've found that Google's DNS servers sometimes take a long time to update. I use it as my worst case propagation test -- If it's propagated to 8.8.8.8, it's probably propagated everywhere. Of course, you can substitute the query type ( -q=txt ) with SRV or MX in the command above to lookup those record types.
You can also run queries in interactive mode. This is useful when you want to look the same query type for several domains. You start interactive mode by just entering nslookup at the CMD prompt, setting the query type, and entering the domain(s) to query. The following example displays the SRV records for theguillets.com according to the remote Google DNS server:
Notice that I changed from the default primary DNS server to Google's using the server 8.8.8.8 command and I set the query type to SRV using the set type=srv command.
Microsoft released Tabbed Conversations for Microsoft Lync 2010 today. Tabbed Conversations is an application that provides a tabbed Lync 2010 conversation window to allow multiple instant messaging (IM) conversations in a single window, as shown below.
Once you start the application and you start an new IM for the first time, Lync briefly opens a normal IM window and then replaces it with the Tabbed Conversations window (above). It then works exactly as the normal IM conversation window, with a few additions.
You can start a new tabbed conversation by clicking the "+" button at the end of the row. This will pop-up the Send Instant Message window for you to choose a new contact. You can also detach a conversation from the tabbed interface by clicking the up arrow icon in the tab. This will open the conversation in the standard Lync IM window. You can bring it back into the tabbed application by re-adding that contact as a new tab.
As expected, you can only do one screen share per tabbed IM conversation at a time, but you can have multiple contacts in that conversation.
It would be nice if the integration was a little smoother. I don't like having to open the application after I launch Lync, and the way it briefly shows the normal Lync IM window before it kicks in is a little annoying. But overall I like the way that it decreases the surface area of Lync, especially on smaller screens.
The 4th Annual UC Roundtable was a great success! About 40 TechEd attendees who RSVP'd joined me, the Exchange Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) team, F5 Networks and the Exchange product group for an entertaining evening at the Georgian Terrace Hotel in Atlanta.
F5 sponsored the event and provided a carving station, macaroni and cheese martinis (which were awesome), and a full bar. Everyone seemed to have a great time. Thank you very much, F5 Networks!
At the Roundtable I was able to let everyone know that F5 is about to release there BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Virtual Edition (VE) for Hyper-V! It's in RC now and should RTM in about two weeks. BIG-IP LTM VE allows you to virtualize your load balancers using the same highly configurable and scalable application found on on the BIG-IP applicance. I highly recommend that you check out the free 90-day trial download when it's available. They already have a BIG-IP LTM VE for VMware avaialble. It's great to use for your Exchange or Lync test lab.
Among the attendees were three gentlemen from the University of Illinois, who are in the middle of a 30,000+ Exchange 2010 migration and Lync deployment. They are going to replace over 34,000 copper phones with Lync soft phones and centralize their Exchange deployment. Interestingly, they are using the same Exchange storage model that Microsoft uses internally -- JBOD for database/log storage (70% DB / 30% Logs on 2TB SATA drives) running on Dell 610 and 710 servers. They will be consolidating 30+ mailbox servers down to nine, including lagged databases. Cool stuff!
Being a larger number of people this year, we broke up into smaller groups where we shared war stories, questions, and laughs. It was good to see the MCMs and Exchange team mingle and interact with everyone. That was a lot of talent and experience in one location!
Great conversations at the UC Roundtable
Michael Bender, Aubrey Moren, and Chris Haaker
Lars Eber, Scott Feltmann, Scott Ladewig, Claudia Perez, Sandip Vashi, David Carr, and myself
Me with the guys from the University of Illinois - Devin Gengelbach, Brent Tuggle, and Kevin Bird
Our hosts - The F5 Team!
Me and David Bjurman-Birr, head of the Exchange MCM Program
Next year TechEd will be in Orlando, FL on June 11-14, 2012. I hope you can make it!
Today was a very busy day, as opposed to the other days that were just busy. :)
I started with the session, "Exchange Server 2010 High Availability Management and Operations" with Scott Scnoll. GREAT session with clear concise explanations of the cmdlets and scripts written for Exchange 2010 about HA and DR. All of the content was new this year. Be sure to view it at TechEd online. The session is now available for download.
Next, I took in another security session, "Rethinking Cyber Threats: Expert Panel" with Laura Chappell, Marcus Murray, and Paula Januszkiewicz. Topics included security, government regulations, IPv6 threats, and "How do you fix stupid". I was able to ask Marcus if Mark Russinovich detected the keylogger Marcus installed on his laptop at the MVP Summit using SysInternals tools, or if he just reimaged. The answer was, "That's under NDA. I want to come back next year."
I then went to my first Lync session, "Troubleshoot Microsoft Lync 2010". All the Lync troubleshooting tools were covered except Snooper, for some reason. What I found interesting was when he showed how to use the monitoring server to get metrics on call and video performance.
I had a TechEd focus group to end my day and then went back to the hotel to get ready for the real UC Roundtable.
The Security Experts Panel.
TechEd Stats for 2011
The TechEd Connect Zone
Must be a problem in this area
CNN Headquarters across from the confrerence center
"Join us now as we tumble down the rabbit hole and into a strange world in which sound and inner-vision is mutable and language is communicated inpure form."
First, let me begin this story by saying that I will never have a career in event scheduling. I'd love to blame this on my iPhone or third-party mobile device, but I can't. It was an amazing combination of coincidence and miscommunication.
As background, I am holding my 4th Annual UC Roundtable event this year at TechEd. This is usually an informal get-together with Exchange and Lync Server IT Pros held at a local bar or other social location offsite. This year, the Exchange Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) team asked if we could join forces with F5 Networks to bring all these groups together, along with the Exchange product team. This event was scheduled for Wednesday from 6:00-8:00pm.
Through a tragic set of events, I was told Tuesday at 4:30pm that the event was happening THAT DAY, not Wednesday. I couldn't believe it, and asked repeatedly, "You're kidding, right?!?" I had to notify 38 people that the event was happening in 90 minutes. Even so, almost everyone confirmed that they could make it, even on this short notice. Thanks, folks!
When I arrived at the hotel where the event was being held, I found that the room was clearly not ready. I checked with the catering manager who told me that the room was indeed booked for Wednesday, as I originally planned. Now I've got 36 people and the Exchange product team showing up with no place to go. The bar in the hotel couldn't accomodate that many people in any sort of format that would work.
I got ahold of David Bjurman-Birr, the head of the Exchange MCM group, who happens to be staying at the hotel and told him what was happening. He offered to have everyone come up to his suite for drinks. I had no other alternative, so we did -- all 50 or so of us. Needless to say, it was more of a frat party than anything else. David and Melissa were totally gracious and acted like this is nothing new, fixing hors d'oeuvres and drinks for everyone. It was quite the spectacle, but everyone told me they had a great time.
Everyone still plans to attend the real UC Roundtable tomorrow evening. I hope.
Occasionally a certificate will become corrupt or is installed without a properly generated private key. Such is the case with a bare CER certificate file. When this happens it will often no longer function with Exchange, IIS, or other web servers.
Here is how to recreate the private key for an installed certificate.
Open the Certificates management console (Start > Run > MMC > Add/Remove Snap-in > Certificates > Computer Account > Local Computer)
Expand Certificates (Local Computer) > Personal > Certificates
View the properties of the certificate you want to create a private key for. On the Details tab, click Serial number.
Copy the serial number, as shown below, to the clipboard:
From an elevated CMD prompt, run the following command:
The output will look something like this, showing that the repairstore command completed successfully:
You will now see a small gold key in the icon for the certificate, indicating that you have the private key. You will also see the message, "You have a private key that corresponds to this certificate" on the bottom of the properties of the certificate.
You may see the error, "Lync has both per-user and per-machine instances installed. Click OK to remove the per-user installation." The error occurs every time the Lync client is launched.
F5 is sponsoring the Fourth Annual UC Roundtable this year at Microsoft TechEd in Atlanta, GA.
This year F5 Networks and the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) team have joined forces with me to present The UC Roundtable (formerly the Exchange Roundtable) which brings Exchange and Lync Server IT Pros together for an informal, yet highly technical get together to discuss all things Exchange and Lync Server!
Join MCM’s, MVP’s and other Exchange and Lync Server experts for a lively discussion. Bring your Exchange or Lync questions, learn or teach others, and have fun! I hope to see you there.
The UC Roundtable will be held Wednesday, May 18 from 6:00-8:00pm. Please RSVP to jeff@expta.com for event details and location.
Ran into a new issue today installing Lync Server 2010 on a freshly baked Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 server. During the Setup Lync Server Components step of the installation, it failed with an error, "Prerequisite installation failed: Wmf2008R2".
WMF is the Windows Media Format Runtime. All Front End Servers and Standard Edition servers where conferencing will be deployed must have the Windows Media Format Runtime installed. WMF is required to run the Windows Media Audio (.wma) files that the Call Park, Announcement, and Response Group applications play for announcements and music.
The issue here is that the WMF package version has changed for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. The workaround is to run the following command from an elevated CMD prompt, as shown:
Once the package is updated, restart the computer when prompted, and continue with the installation. The Lync setup check will detect that the a proper version is installed and will proceed.
I work with a lot of different clients and often need to generate private certificates for applications, such as Exchange, Lync Server, and System Center. I'm often surprised that clients aren't aware if they even have a certificate authority server in their domain and if so, what it's name is.
Here's a simple way to check for an enterprise CA in a Windows domain. Run the following command from a CMD prompt:
certutil -config - -ping
Notice the extra dash "-" between the -config and -ping switches.
If there is an enterprise CA published in Active Directory, you will see a pop-up box asking you to choose the CA to ping, as shown below:
Notice that CA name and the computer that hosts it are displayed. Once you select the certification authority and click OK, certutil will ping the server to make sure that it's online and functioning, as shown below:
Certutil successfully pinged the CA
If certutil is enable to locate and Enterprise CA in the domain, it will display an error message indicating that no active Certification Authorities were found:
Certutil was unable to locate an Enterprise CA in the domain
As I posted earlier, Microsoft released the Lync Server 2010 Web Scheduler today. It provides a Web-based online Lync meeting scheduling and management experience for Lync Server 2010.
By default, the Web Scheduler requires that users enter their domain and user name along with their password to login, as shown below:
To configure the Web Scheduler with a default domain, so that users can sign in with only their user name, you must update files in both the Internal (Int) and External (Ext) virtual directories. Luckily the files are identical, so you usually only need to update the files in one directory and copy them to the other.
Here's how to do it:
Install the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Web Scheduler.
Navigate to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Web Components\Web Scheduler\Int\Scripts folder.
Edit the WebTicketManager.js file with Notepad or your favorite editor.
Go to line 143 and insert the following line:
userName+="@domain.com"
where domain.com is the FQDN for your internal domain.
Now prepend "//" to lines 144 and 145 to remark them, as shown below:
Save the file.
If your internal domain name matches your external domain name, copy WebTicketManager.js to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Web Components\Web Scheduler\Ext\Scripts folder. Otherwise, perform the same edit on the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Web Components\Web Scheduler\Ext\Scripts folder.
These edits will append @domain.com to the user name entered, unless the user entered a specific domain as either domain\username or username@domain.com on the logon page.
Now we need to edit the Web Scheduler logon page to reflect the change:
Navigate to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Web Components\Web Scheduler\Int\UserControlsfolder.
Edit the LoginControl.ascx file with Notepad or your favorite editor.
Edit line 28 to read "User Name:", rather than "Domain\user name:", as shown below:
Save the file.
Copy LoginControl.ascx to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Web Components\Web Scheduler\Ext\UserControls folder.
