Interview with a UC Pro – Tom Laciano

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This week I’m interviewing one of the legends of the Microsoft UC community, Tom Laciano of Microsoft.
His blog has been a resource I’ve called on time and time again over the years to help me out with a sticky problem or explain something. He’s always provided great LCS/OCS/Lync technical content for as long as I’ve been playing with the product since the LCS 2005 days.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom at Wave 14 Airlift in Seattle last year and thought it was time I pulled him aside and asked him some questions about his UC career.

What’s your technical background? How did you end up where you are today?
My father worked at IBM which influenced me and my brother and sister. The Commodore 64 was the first family computer and then various IBM PC’s. I recall taking a BASIC class at the community college and my Dad even quizzed me at one time to add numbers in Hex. I chose Business Administration in College and thanks to a roommate and my wife then girlfriend I put my resume in for Microsoft starting with DOS 5.x and Windows 3.1 support. I moved over to the Messaging team when Exchange 4.0 was in beta, a short stint in training and back to support when LCS 2003 was first released. I moved to the Product Group working with key customers facing unique deployments or significant challenges and just recently moved to a new team I’ll describe in the next question.

Can you tell us what part of Microsoft you work for and what your position entails?
I am now in the Office 365 group with Lync Online in the dedicated space as an Operations Manager. The role is very much a Project Management skillset. My current role is working with existing customers who want to deploy the Enterprise Voice feature set with either a SIP Trunk or On-Premise SBC. While I have a technical background in the product which can help with customer dialogs, I am the person who is responsible for managing the project towards completion.

Tom with his wife and 3 kids

What first made you get into UC and specialising in Lync?
It was a bit of luck as when I moved back to support from training, I moved to the Windows Networking team. My first day on the team was a morale event cookout and the guy who was returning from beta was in desperate need of folks he could train on this new product. I mentioned being new with no real work load yet and it sounded like another “verb” application as Exchange Conferencing was, so how hard could that be? J

What’s your favourite thing about Lync?
As a remote worker I have two things. First is the integration of presence in websites and Office which helps me maintain a really small contact list. The second thing I like is how easy it is to join a meeting and have video and shared content.

What was the most challenging LCS/OCS/Lync problem you ever solved?
I will choose one of the earliest calls I took because it really helped me gain an expertise. I helped the IT Admin for one of the State Supreme Courts setting up LCS 2003 with TLS so the judge could have a secure wireless dialog with his team. The woman I assisted was sharp and patient and through that issue I learned firsthand that documentation can be a great start, but the truth is in the actual behavior of the product.

If you could think of one feature you’d like included in the next version of Lync, what would it be?
Having worked with customers in this area for some time I would have to say having Group Chat becoming a first class experience.

Tom with his son at the Speedway

What do you feel is your area of expertise, where you’d consider yourself a bit of a rockstar?
I still believe I possess significant knowledge in the area of certificates for the product.

Your blog is known for being a insightful, consistent resource across the entire lifespan of the LCS/OCS/Lync product. When did you start it and what direction has it taken?
I started in 2004 and other than just the subsequent versions of the product, I would say the one change has been the inclusion of a few off-topic posts. I still find this one hilarious

Whereabouts in the USA are you from and what do you think makes your hometown/city great?
I am from Concord, NC. The Tourism folks would love for me to say Lowe’s Motor Speedway or Concord Mills Mall but I like the older part of the town with its small shops and restaurants. While this is in Charlotte and not Concord, my favorite BBQ restaurant is Old Hickory House BBQ on N. Tryon Street. They have an antique telephone switchboard in the front of the restaurant which I find funny given my work with the next generation of voice technology.

When you’re not dishing out quality technical know-how, what do you do on weekends for fun?
My wife and I have 4 kids so most of our time involves coaching their sports and this summer was my first year having “ownership” of her Mom’s garden. Turns out you don’t buy 2 flats of tomato plants or squash and certainly 1 hot pepper plant and not 10 is enough. This meant that this was the first year I learned how to can tomatoes.

Tom's 1st batch of garden tomatoes

Also, I met my wife in college as she helped start the Women’s Club Soccer team and I was their first coach. This was our first year back playing adult co-ed soccer in about 7 years. I play both goalie and defense, she plays mid-field and forward.

Thanks a lot for taking part Tom, those are some juicy looking tomatoes! Make sure you check out Tom’s blog on TechNet and follow him on Twitter.

Rolling Back Schema Preparation for Lync Server 2010

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A lot of requests have come up in the past both on the Microsoft TechNet forums and during previous engagements around how to mitigate the risks involved in extending the AD schema for Lync Server 2010.

There are rollback processes that come with Lync Server 2010 to remove the forest and domain level changes, but once you’ve done the schema level change, there’s no way of rolling back the changes using the Lync Server 2010 tools.

For a lot of IT teams, this will be acceptable as there is inherent faith in Microsoft’s ability to extend its own schema.
However, if your AD environment is heavily regulated by IT governance and your change control guidelines require a back out process for each change, there is a way to provide this. I’ll outline each step below.

Isolating the Schema Master from AD

To provide a back out plan for this change, the following risk mitigation prerequisite steps must be carried out prior to running the actual AD schema preparation step:

Log on to the domain controller that holds the Schema Master FSMO role.
Temporarily suspend AD replication capability from the domain controller using the following step

From a Command Prompt, run:
repadmin /options +DISABLE_OUTBOUND_REPL

This process will suspend outbound AD replication from this domain controller, meaning changes we make won’t replicate to all of AD. Alternatively, you can disable the NIC of the machine, or disconnect it completely if it is a physical machine to achieve the same outcome.

Running Schema Preparation

To prepare schema for Lync, log onto the domain controller that holds the Schema Master FSMO role. You can then prepare the schema using either the Lync Server 2010 Deployment Wizard or the Lync Server 2010 Management Shell.

I’m not going to republish what is already documented, so here are the Microsoft TechNet library articles for performing the Schema Preparation step using both methods mentioned above:

Using Setup to Run Schema Preparation

Using Cmdlets to Run Schema Preparation

To prepare schema of the forest, you must be using an account with Schema Admins group membership.

Verifying Schema Preparation Completed Successfully

From the previously linked TechNet article:

Log on to a domain controller as a member of the Enterprise Admins group.
Open ADSI Edit by running adsiedit.msc from the Run command.
On the Action menu, click Connect to.
In the Connection Settings dialog box under Select a well known Naming Context, select Schema, and then click OK.
Under the schema container, search for CN=ms-RTC-SIP-SchemaVersion. If this object exists, and the value of the rangeUpper attribute is 1100 and the value of the rangeLower attribute is 14, then the schema was successfully updated. If this object does not exist or the values of the rangeUpper and rangeLower attributes are not as specified, then the schema was not modified.

Reintroducing the Schema Master to AD

Once you’ve verified that the AD schema preparation was successful, you can roll back the risk mitigation prerequisite by completing the following steps:

Log on to the domain controller in the domain that holds the Schema Master FSMO role.
From a Command Prompt, run:
repadmin /options -DISABLE_OUTBOUND_REPL.

If you chose the option to disable/disconnect the NIC, you can reconnect/re-enable this now.

From here, you can carry out the AD Forest and Domain preparation steps for Lync.

Rolling back if Schema Preparation failed

If the schema preparation step has failed for whatever reason, then replication links or network connectivity SHOULD NOT be restored. The following steps are recommended to be carried out:

The domain controller holding the Schema Master FSMO role must be decommissioned from Active Directory and rebuilt.
The Schema Master role should be seized from the original domain controller and homed on another domain controller in the domain.

If these steps are required, they will not affect normal operational functionality or Active Directory structural integrity e.g. account and service logon.

Proving the roll back worked

Use the following steps to prove that the back out was successful:

On a domain controller within the domain, open ADSIEdit.msc.
Navigate to the following container CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=contoso,DC=com.
Verify that the CN=RTC Service container does not exist.

From here, you can troubleshoot why the Lync Schema Preparation failed. Once resolved, you should attempt schema preparation again.

Conclusion

Using this process, you can effectively satisfy change control requirements and make sure your Lync Server 2010 deployment isn’t delayed or hindered.
If you’ve got any questions around this, please feel free to post in the comments section.

Cumulative Update 4 (CU4) for Lync Server 2010 Released

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Over the weekend, the much anticipated Cumulative Update 4 for Lync Server 2010 was released. I was up in Scotland enjoying sunny Glasgow so missed out on providing super-cutting edge breaking news, but fellow Modality consultants Tom Arbuthnot and Ari Protheroe and MUCUGL co-founder Adam Jacobs covered it pretty extensively in their blogs.

This CU is a precursor for the Mobility side of things on the server, and is in preparation for the impending release of the Lync Mobile clients for Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, Android and Symbian. It does not however, actually include the Mobility server components requires to provide functionality for the mobile clients (as Lync MVP Kevin Peters mentioned).

In addition to enabling new functionality, there are a bunch of bugs fixed in this update relating to things like CAC, file transfer, the Address Book service, media flow for AV conferencing and much much more.

There are a few new Lync Server Management Shell cmdlets in CU4, and they all pertain to mobility. I won’t reinvent the wheel here by explaining what they all do as Tom has covered them all really well from the CU4 help file in his blog post above.

As always, these updates are cumulative (hence the name), which means they contain all updates from previous CUs as well. Remember to back up your Lync servers and configuration before applying the update.
The Microsoft download link is available here.

Modality Systems presents Microsoft Lync Roundtable Events

How to retrieve all users with a specific country code in Lync

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Recently I came across a scenario where I needed to retrieve a list of all voice users on OCS 2007 R2 with a French phone number using Lync Server Management Shell (LSMS). It took me a bit of work and help from scripting guru and fellow Modality consultant Tom Arbuthnot, but I ended up getting something sorted that did what I needed.

Building the Base Cmdlet

Based on the fact that French phone numbers begin with +33 in the number string and the users we need to find are on OCS 2007 R2, this gives us two requirements to get our LSMS cmdlet going.

The first switch we apply in the Get-CsUser cmdlet is -OnOfficeCommunicationServer to search for users on legacy pools (OCS 2007 or OCS 2007 R2).
The second switch we apply is the -filter switch followed by the user attributes we want to filter by. We also need to specify whether we want to match exactly (e.g. EnterpriseVoiceEnabled -eq $true) or search for a string like what we specify (LineURI -like “tel:+33*”).

So initially, we produce this cmdlet in LSMS with the appropriate filter to search for Enterprise Voice enabled users with a Line URI starting with tel:+33:

Get-CsUser -OnOfficeCommunicationServer -Filter {EnterpriseVoiceEnabled -eq $true -and LineURI -like “tel:+33*”}

This cmdlet will give you a list of users with French phone numbers but will also list heaps of info like the users’ client policy, voice policy, yada yada yada, which we want to get rid of.

Cutting out the fluff

I just wanted the names and numbers of our French users, so I modified the command to just show me this info by piping the cmdlet to a formatted table with only the properties I wanted to see:

Get-CsUser -OnOfficeCommunicationServer -Filter {EnterpriseVoiceEnabled -eq $true -and LineURI -like “tel:+33*”} | ft -property DisplayName, LineURI

This cmdlet will give us the same information again, but will give us a nice looking table with just the DisplayName and LineURI attributes that we want.

This will print the search results out in your current LSMS session, however if you’d like to export these out to text file to send via email, run this command:

Get-CsUser -OnOfficeCommunicationServer -Filter {EnterpriseVoiceEnabled -eq $true -and LineURI -like “tel:+33*”} | ft -property DisplayName, LineURI | Out-File C:\voice_users_export.txt

Your list of users will then be exported out to file to the path you specify after Out-File.

Taking it further

You can take this cmdlet and do a few other things also based on your requirements. Like if you’d like to get users on Lync Server rather than OCS, change the switch in your command from -OnOfficeCommunicationServer to -OnLyncServer e.g.

Get-CsUser -OnLyncServer -Filter {EnterpriseVoiceEnabled -eq $true -and LineURI -like “tel:+33*”} | ft -property DisplayName, LineURI | Out-File C:\voice_users_export.txt

Obviously you could modify this to retrieve users with all other kinds of numbers also. Just change the +33 to the country code assigned to your Enterprise Voice enabled users to whatever other country code you need.

Hope this command or a part of it helps you with your voice documentation/ investigation work on Lync/OCS 2007 R2.

#ucomsldn and MUCUG London Christmas Drinks

Exporting and importing contact lists in Lync Server 2010

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I’ve been doing a fair bit of work around coexistence and migration lately and throwing contact lists around all over the place using dbimpexp. In light of this, I thought it’d be a good idea to do up a post to help you understand what dbimpexp.exe is as it’s a super useful bit of kit to have at your disposal during a Lync implementation/migration or during day-to-day operations.

If you’ve had experience backing up or restoring OCS 2007 R2 or Lync Server, chances are you’ll be familiar with dbimpexp. It’s very helpful for moving contact lists in a DR situation or between deployments in different domains. The only constant is that the SIP address must be the same when exporting or importing, so there’s no dependency on the AD domain that the contact lists have been exported from or are being imported into.

What is Dbimpexp?

Essentially (as per Microsoft), it’s a utility for exporting, managing and importing XML files containing homed resource data from a Microsoft Lync Server 2010 SQL database. When they say homed resource data, they mean user contact lists and conference directories. Dbimpexp allows you to import or export users’ contact lists either on a per user basis or a bulk pool-wide basis.

Using dbimpexp.exe

Dbimpexp.exe is located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Support on a Lync Front End Server. You’ll be running it on one of your Enterprise Edition Front End servers or your Standard Edition server to export or import users’ contact lists.

The commands are slightly different for Standard and Enterprise Edition Front Ends, so I’ll cover both in the following sections.

Exporting Contact Lists

So the first thing we want to do is get those contact lists out of one server/pool so we can have them stored to restore in the event of failure, or so we can import them into a new server where the SIP domain is the same. We can export the contact list of an individual or the contact lists of all users on the server/pool.

Standard Edition

For Lync Server Standard Edition, we run the following commands to export users’ contact lists.

For a Single User

This will export out an XML file of the contact list for the single user you specify:

dbimpexp.exe /user:<sip address> /hrxmlfile:”<path that you want to write the xml file to>”

So an example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /user:jmorris@justin-morris.net /hrxmlfile:”C:\justin.xml”

For all users homed on the server

This will export out an XML files of all users’ contact lists on the server/pool:

dbimpexp.exe /hrxmlfile:”<path that you want to write the xml file to>”

An example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /hrxmlfile:”C:\allusers.xml”

Enterprise Edition

For Lync Server Enterprise Edition, we need to specify the backend SQL instance to connect to that the rtc database resides on. Run the following commands to export users’ contact lists from your Enterprise Edition Front End pool:

For a Single User

This will export out an XML file of the contact list for the single user you specify:

dbimpexp.exe /user:<sip address> /sqlserver:”<SQL Server FQDN\instance name>” /hrxmlfile:”<path that you want to write the xml file to>”

So an example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /user:justin@justin-morris.net /sqlserver:”SQL01.justin-morris.net\LYNC” /hrxmlfile:”C:\justin.xml”

For all users homed on the pool

This will export out an XML files of all users’ contact lists on the server/pool:

dbimpexp.exe /sqlserver:”<SQL Server FQDN\instance name>” /hrxmlfile:”<path that you want to write the xml file to>”

So an example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /sqlserver:”SQL01.justin-morris.net\LYNC” /hrxmlfile:”C:\justin.xml”

Importing Contact Lists

So now that we’ve exported our contact lists from the source server/pool, we can take the XML files that dbimpexp has created and import the contact lists into the target server/pool.

The only difference between the export and import commands is that to import users, you need to specify the /import switch and the restore type switch of /restype:user (which is different from /restype:all which will attempt to import the conference directories also).

Standard Edition

For Lync Server Standard Edition, we run the following commands to import users’ contact lists.

For a Single User

This will import the contact list from the XML file for the single user you specify:

dbimpexp.exe /import /user:<sip address> /hrxmlfile:”<path where the xml file resides>” /restype:user

So an example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /import /user:jmorris@justin-morris.net /hrxmlfile:”C:\justin.xml” /restype:user

For all users homed on the server

This will import all users’ contact lists on the server/pool from the XML file you specify:

dbimpexp.exe /import /hrxmlfile:”<path where the xml file resides>” /restype:user

An example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /import /hrxmlfile:”C:\allusers.xml” /restype:user

Enterprise Edition

For Lync Server Enterprise Edition, we run the following commands to import users’ contact lists.

For a Single User

This will import the contact list from the XML file for the single user you specify:

dbimpexp.exe /import /user:<sip address> /sqlserver:”<SQL Server FQDN\instance name>” /hrxmlfile:”<path where the xml file resides>” /restype:user

So an example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /import /user:justin@justin-morris.net /sqlserver:”SQL01.justin-morris.net\LYNC” /hrxmlfile:”C:\justin.xml” /restype:user

For all users homed on the pool

This will import all users’ contact lists on the server/pool from the XML file you specify:

dbimpexp.exe /import /sqlserver:”<SQL Server FQDN\instance name>” /hrxmlfile:”<path where the xml file resides>” /restype:user

So an example of this would be:
dbimpexp.exe /sqlserver:”SQL01.justin-morris.net\LYNC” /hrxmlfile:”C:\allusers.xml” /restype:user

Conclusion

So as you can see, it’s a really good tool to have up your sleeve. It’s great for restoring data after you’ve had to do a force move of users or have just rebuilt a new server and have a working Front End ready to go.

If you’ve got any questions about how it works or when you’d need to use it, drop me a comment below.

Lync CEBP in action – never miss an IM again

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I see loads of requests on the Microsoft TechNet forums from time to time asking whether Lync can be configured to automatically bring the conversation window forward when a new IM comes through. This is because the flashing icon in the Windows taskbar can be easy to miss if someone has IM’d you and you didn’t happen to be at your PC.

We sat down at Modality and thought about how we could solve this problem. I’m stoked to announce that Paul Nearney and his awesome development team have come up with a solution. Presenting SuperToast by Modality Systems:

SuperToast will bring your new IMs up in a notification window on your desktop so it’s totally obvious you’ve just been IM’d. No more missing critical messages because they’re sitting in your taskbar going unanswered.

SuperToast is a cinch to install and runs in the system tray. It can be configured to wait a certain period of time (default 30 seconds) before accepting the IM and presenting the notification.

Check out more info on Paul Nearney’s blog, Code Lync, about the this release, available free from Modality Systems.

MUCUG London October Review and Lync for Mac Update

An update for Lync for Mac

Last Friday an update was released by Microsoft to fix the Office 365 and certificate issues on OS X. More info is available in the blog post from the Office for Mac team here. Technical info is in the Microsoft KB article here and this page includes a link to download if you’d rather not wait for Microsoft AutoUpdate to do its thing.

SQL Database Mirroring with Lync Server 2010 Series – Backend Databases

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In the previous part of this series, I talked about how we fail over our databases. In this part, I’ll cover what happens to Lync after the failover.
The objective of this exercise was to attempt to get our Lync Enterprise Edition Pool to function when we took the primary SQL server offline and pointed Lync to the SQL mirror node where our back end databases had been mirrored to.

Trying to get it to work

I found that after failing over, the SQL Native Client on the Front End servers was Database Mirroring aware and had automatically redirected itself to the mirror node of SQL02. This was confirmed when I saw a successful automatic connection to SQL02 on port 1433 from the Front End server (FE03) that we’d failed over to.

However the Lync Server Front End service is not Database Mirroring aware, and we saw loads of errors and warnings in the Lync Server event log telling us that a connection to the SQL server could not be made as it was consistently attempting to connect to SQL01 (the failed server) that is defined in the Lync topology.

When I attempted to sign in using Lync, all we could get was the “Limited Functionality Mode” experience with no presence or contact list.

At this stage, I started to think about how we could get this to work, and changed the DNS record for SQL01 to resolve to the IP address of SQL02, which didn’t help. I even changed the IP address of SQL02 to that of SQL01, which still didn’t result in a successful connection. Everything I tried to get SQL02 to look like SQL01 wouldn’t work.

How to achieve basic client functionality

Now that we’ve discovered that Lync doesn’t support Database Mirroring natively nor do basic DNS changes help, I worked out that we needed to do to get the Lync FE services to start properly and to make a database connection to the SQL mirror node.

Delete the computer account of the principal SQL server (SQL01) from Active Directory.
Modify the hostname of the mirror SQL Server (SQL02) to that of the failed, principal SQL Server (SQL01).
Restart the mirror SQL server and verify that all SQL services are started.
Modify the DNS A record for the failed principal SQL server so that it resolves to the IP address of the mirror SQL server.
Restart the Lync Front End server and confirm that the Front End service is started.
Verify signing in with the Lync client and that you receive the full client experience and not “Limited Functionality Mode”.

As you can see, this is by no means a “High Availability” solution, as it means computer name and AD changes which rules this out as being an acceptable “quick failover” scenario and even rules it out as a Disaster Recovery solution.

Because Lync Server is inherently secure, it means we cannot connect an FE server to a back end SQL server that isn’t defined in the topology.

Why is it not supported?

One reason why it’s not supported is that there is a highly dependent and integrated relationship between the rtc andrtcdyn databases.

Each database refers to the other to maintain a consistent presence state to the user of their contacts, and of their presence to their contacts. The rtc database is mostly static, holding publications of users, contact lists, privacy relationships etc whereas the rtcdyn database is dynamic, holding state about which front end in the pool holds a SIP endpoint and what active subscriptions are bound to the endpoint.

Because database mirroring is configured and managed at an individual database level, in the event of failure OCS/Lync cannot guarantee both databases are in the consistent state required to maintain the required quality user experience.

Summary

To summarise, when the failover process is executed, the following behaviour was observed:

Initially, the Lync client signs in but is in “limited functionality mode”. This is because the Lync Front End service cannot communicate with the back-end database.
Front End Service starts but events are logged advising that a back-end database connection cannot be made.
It was concluded that due to inherent product design, the Lync Front End service will not connect to a SQL server that is not defined in the Lync Topology.
It was only after we deleted the computer account for the failed principal SQL server from Active Directory and renamed the mirror SQL server did errors stop appearing in the Application Log and the Lync client function properly.

What about Group Chat?

In the next instalment, I’ll talk more about what happens to Group Chat when we failover the databases to the SQL mirror node. Make sure you subscribe to get updated!