OCS XMPP fix it

Really nice blog about OCS XMPP - If you are like me and your OCS XMPP gateway lives in the DMZ, and your DMZ hosts have generic names that are not indicative of what lives on them for basic security purposes, make sure your SRV records, Certificate and HOSTNAME all match. Hard requirement for the gateway. I tried to trick it out and failed. Ended up going way out of our DMZ convention to end up with a host name that matched my cert name. Working great.

http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/schertz_jeff/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=91

Lync - the new OCS

Starting to look at RC for Lync. So far so good. Not happy about the rebranding after spending almost two years socializing the idea with our user base on OCS and Live Meeting, but we'll live. Moving fast once source hits on the new environment and will post here with the road bumps.

Notes:

Lync clients cannot talk to an OCS R2 server - so as before, push client updates last once your pool is in place and your users migrated. Client readiness from a prerequisite perspective and training will be issues that can't be ignored. Prep your clients now.

Schema updates - if you haven't already - wait for the RTM version as there will be schema changes from RC to RTM.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Workload Architecture Poster

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=af2c17cb-207c-4c52-8811-0aca6dfadc94

This poster of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 describes the traffic flow of protocols and ports used in each workload. Communications Server 2007 R2 supports the following workloads: IM and Presence, Conferencing, Application Sharing, and Enterprise Voice. These filtered views can assist you in architecting your deployment of Communications Server 2007 R2. The different server roles are described along with server certificate requirements. Firewall and DNS configuration requirements are also described.