Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool

Brief Description
Capacity planning and load simulation tool for Office Communications Server 2007 R2

Quick Details
Version: 6907.3
Date Published: 3/30/2009
Language: English
Download Size: 8 KB - 27.0 MB*

Overview
The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Toolkit provides a set of tools and documentation to simplify capacity planning for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The Capacity Planning Toolkit can be used as a complement to the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Planning Guide.

This release of the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Toolkit contains tools and documentation to simplify your hardware planning, provide you with increased knowledge and best practices for performance tuning, and improve your ability to verify the performance of your intended Office Communications Server 2007 R2 deployments.

The Capacity Planning Toolkit is intended for use by IT professionals in a test environment prior to production deployment. These tools should never be used against a live production environment.

The tools in this Toolkit are designed to be used with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 only. If you are searching for tools that work with Live Communications Server 2005, please download the Live Communications Server 2005 Capacity Planning Toolkit from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=107a5e83-ca59-4bcb-a3bc-27efd97a477d&displaylang=en

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Office Communications Server 2007 R2 VHD

Brief Description
This download comes as a pre-configured VHD. This download enables you evaluate Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for 60 days.

Quick Details
Version: 1.0
Date Published: 3/24/2009
Language: English
Download Size: 664 KB - 8902.6 MB

Overview
Start evaluating Office Communications Server today. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 delivers streamlined communications for your users so they can find and communicate with the right person, right now, from the applications they use most (like Office Outlook).

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Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Hotfix KB 961552

Brief Description
This download contains an update for Microsoft Office Communicator 2007.

Quick Details
File Name: communicator.msp
Version: 2.0.6362.129
Knowledge Base (KB) Articles: KB961552
Date Published: 3/27/2009
Language: English

Overview
This hotfix download for Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is described in the Knowledge Base article 961552.

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Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1

Brief Description
The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Management Pack monitors all editions of Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Quick Details
File Name: OCS2007_R2_SCOM2007.msi
Version: 6.0.6907.21
Date Published: 3/26/2009
Language: English
Download Size: 1.1 MB

Overview
The Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Management Pack monitors Standard and Enterprise Edition of Office Communications Server 2007 R2. This release also incorporates the Quality of Experience (QoE) MP which was previously a separate Management Pack. Monitored types are event log entries, performance counters, as well as stateful monitoring of QoE. Note that this version of the Management Pack only monitors Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and cannot be used to monitor Office Communications Server 2007.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 monitored objects are:

* Enterprise Edition
* Standard Edition
* A/V Authentication service
* Application Sharing Server
* A/V Conferencing Server
* Conference Announcement Service
* Conference Attendant Service
* Web Components
* Archiving Server
* Communicator Web Access
* Mediation Server
* Monitoring Server
* CDR Server
* SIP Proxy Server
* A/V Conferencing Edge service
* Access Edge service
* Web Conferencing Edge service
* Monitoring Server
* QoE of A/V Conferencing Server
* QoE of Mediation Server
* QoE of network locations


Feature Bullet Summary:

* Alerts indicating service impacting events
* Alerts indicating configuration, and other non-service impacting issues
* State monitoring of Office Communications Server services
* Product knowledge: Cause and resolution of identified problems


Release History

* 3/26/2009 - Version 6.0.6907.21, Original release of the English version.

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Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Communicator Web Access Language Pack

Brief Description
This download adds multilingual user interface (MUI) functionality to Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2007 R2 release.

Quick Details
File Name: CWALangPack.exe
Version: 6907.30
Date Published: 3/26/2009
Language: English
Download Size: 6.1 MB

Overview
Users of Communicator Web Access 2007 R2 have access to many of the same features that are available in the Office Communicator 2007 R2 desktop client. By using Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2007 R2 release, users can access the instant messaging, presence, and conferencing features in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 through a Web browser without installing software desktop client or connecting through a VPN.

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Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Response Group Service Language Pack

Brief Description
The Response Group Service Language Pack delivers additional languages for the Response Group Configuration Tool and the Response Group tab.

Quick Details
File Name: AcdWebMlp.exe
Version: 6907.30
Date Published: 3/26/2009
Language: English

Overview
The Response Group Service Language Pack delivers additional languages for the Web-based Response Group Configuration Tool and the Response Group tab in the Office Communicator 2007 R2 client. By installing this language pack on your Office Communications Server Web Components servers, you can enable Response Group Service administrators or response group managers to view or configure Response Group Service settings in their preferred language. Also, formal agents in your organization can view the Response Group tab in their preferred language instead of the language configured on the server.

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Integrating Telephony with Office Communications Server 2007 and 2007 R2

Quick Details
File Name: OCS R2 Enterprise Telephony Integration White Paper.docx
Version: 1.1
Date Published: 3/26/2009
Language: English

Overview

This paper details for our customers, partners and the industry at large the approach that we have defined and the various programs that we are putting in place to support this strategy.

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OCS CWA 2007 R2 and Normalization Rules

A nice post from OCS team blog write by Jens Trier Rasmussen

OCS 2007 introduced the concept of location profiles and normalization rules to convert phone numbers from one format to another, typically to E.164 formatted numbers with a prefixed ‘+’. A set of normalization rules are assigned to a location profile and within the location profile the rules can be ordered to control which rule will be applied first in case multiple rules can be used for a given phone number.

Read more at OCS Team Blog

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News - Unified Communications: Does Microsoft Still Need Nortel?

When VoiceCon 2009 kicks off March 30 in Orlando, The VAR Guy wonders: Will Microsoft arrive solo to this latest unified communications dance, or will it still have Nortel Networks on its arm? Here are some clues.
Fact is, the Microsoft-Nortel relationship — inked in 2006 — has served its purpose. At this time last year, Microsoft and Nortel said they had attracted 500 joint unified communications customers — among other major major milestones. Impressive stuff.
Read more at thevarguy

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Microsoft Forefront Security for OCS 2007 R2

FSOCS provides fast and effective protection against IM-based malware for OCS 2007 and OCS 2007 R2 environments by including multiple scanning engines from industry-leading security partners. FSOCS also helps reduce corporate liability by blocking instant messages containing inappropriate content.

This release includes:

· 64bit support

· Support for OCS 2007 R2

· Support for OCS 2007 Enterprise Edition server roles

· Integration with OCS 2007 Access Edge role to protect corporate IM from external public IM threats

· Localization in 11 languages

Like other Forefront server security products, FSOCS provides superior detection of the latest threats when compared to single engine solutions by using our multiple engine scanning technology. FSOCS has also been featured in a few of the OCS R2 virtual launch sessions that you should check out. Lastly, we are making available some new content including a new demo walk though, case studies from Sporton International and Convergent Systems, and a datasheet. Be on the lookout in the next few weeks for our Technet virtual hands on labs!

Secure your OCS deployments and download FSOCS today!

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SmartSIP for OCS 2007 R2

Evangelyze Communications’ (EC) SmartSIP solution extends the already powerful telephony capabilities of the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 platforms by enabling SIP connectivity with virtually any internet telephony service provider (ITSP) or SIP phone.

• Extends OCS SIP trunk support to virtually any ITSP
• Multi-SIP trunk support per OCS Mediation Server
• Improvements to OCS 2007 R2 platform:
  • ENUM support
  • NAT Traversal
  • AD phone number matching for extension/DID
• Support for generic SIP PBXs and endpoints/devices
• Virtual gateway service

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OCS 2007 QoE parameter

Assess Voice-Related Network Conditions
Several factors contribute to a network’s ability to carry voice. For example, the ITU specifies that from the time speech is uttered, it should reach the listener’s ear within 150 ms for an optimal experience. At 250 ms, the delay is acceptable, but at 400 ms participants will begin to experience awkward start/stop audio collisions, especially during a conference, when speakers are more likely to interrupt one another. To prevent this and other situations, the underlying network should meet the following guidelines:

Factor	Recommended value
Latency	< 50 ms
Jitter	< 30 ms
Packet loss	< 5%
Bandwidth	See below

Measure network latency, jitter, and packet loss during normal network conditions
It is important to verify that baseline network latency, jitter, and packet loss fall below the thresholds that are shown in the previous table. You should measure these factors within each LAN location and between locations on your WAN. The actual test payload should be a UDP stream of approximately 64 byte packets sent every 20 ms. A number of tools are available to perform this test, with varying price and sophistication. Microsoft Network Monitor is one option, but free tools are available on the Internet, and several companies sell other sophisticated network analysis tools like wireshark. With any of these tools, you can measure these network factors in all supported topologies.

Check behavior of firewalls, switches, and packet shapers

Many companies place additional firewalls within the corporate network, which can create issues related to port blocking; however, just because the requisite ports are opened on these internal and perimeter firewalls doesn’t mean that the network path is voice ready. Often these additional network components introduce latency or alter the data flow of the stream. For example, the preferred transport for media flow is UDP, because it is connectionless and therefore more suitable for real-time communication. Most enterprises run their services on TCP, and network administrators may not realize that their infrastructure is giving lower priority to UDP or spreading out successive UDP packets. This type of behavior needs to be checked and corrected.

Perform a Network Audit
Several companies provide services for doing a network audit. A typical audit report will show detailed information about your entire network topology. If your enterprise doesn’t have the tools, resources or expertise to perform the analysis described above, it may be worth enlisting one of these companies to perform a network audit.

QoE and QoS
QoE is effectively a superset of QoS. It brings a broader, end user-centered perspective to ensuring voice and video quality than the narrower, traditional network-centered approach. Because the end user experience can be affected by network factors, Office Communications Server supports targeted QoS by using the differentiated services model (DiffServ). For details and additional resources about differentiated services, see “An Overview of Windows 2000 Quality of Service” at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742478.aspx.

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ClearOne CHAT 170 for OCS 2007

A speakerphone for individual or small group use, the CHAT 170 connects to PCs and laptops for rich, full-duplex audio communication with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. The CHAT 170 is the perfect addition to the office or conference room for greatly enhanced collaboration.
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