I didn’t think we’d ever see this!  Ori on the Forefront TMG product blog has announced Update 2 for TMG SP1, which includes support for NLB with teamed or VLAN Tagged NICs.  The blog entry is here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/archive/2010/11/30/support-for-nlb-on-vlan-tagged-or-teamed-network-adapters.aspx & the update itself here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2433623/

Rob

I was onsite the other day in need of testing an ActiveSync connection at which point I remembered about this great tool:

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com

It can be used to test ActiveSync, Exchange Web Services (EWS), Outlook Connectivity (Anywhere and Autodiscover) and basic email sending/ receiving.

A really useful tool which saves time faffing about having to locate spare phones and what-not.

NeilC

I ran into this one in the wild today – as has Neil C, adding routes using route add under server 2008r2 seems to give some inconsistent results – using netsh does the job nicely, there’s a nice write up of the commands here: http://fixmyitsystem.blogspot.com/2010/10/adding-static-route-using-netsh-and.html

Rob

This seems to be a bit of a black art – however Microsoft have published guidance for BPOS / Office 365, which is ideal for calculating your own numbers: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc745931.aspx. 

Rob

Just required this detail for a customer so thought that you may all find it as useful as I (taken from MS detail).

Some information on call details:

When planning for media bandwidth usage per scenario, use the following tables, which describe the average amount of bandwidth used per media type.

Audio/Video Capacity Planning, Peer-to-Peer Sessions

Audio/Video Capacity Planning, Conferences

Audio Capacity Planning, PSTN

The network bandwidth numbers in these tables represent one-way traffic only and take silence suppression into account.

When you calculate the actual bandwidth usage for a certain scenario, it is important to understand the actual media flows, which are as follows:

In a two-party scenario:

• Users send audio streams only while they speak.
• Both participants receive audio streams.
• If video is used, both users send and receive video streams during the entire call.

In a Conferencing scenario (that is, a call with more than two participants):

• Users send audio streams only while they speak.
• All participants receive audio streams.
• If video is used, only two participants upload a video stream at a time (that is, the active speaker and the previous active speaker)
• If video is used, all participants receive video streams.

NeilC

You may or may not be aware but with Lync Federation to MSN enabled and a remote contact using MSN 2011 you can now do audio calls – this could be a useful feature if you have users on MAC’s as I believe they have to use the MSN client (I haven’t tested this however).

To get this working you need to change the default encryption type for Lync from ‘RequireEncryption’ to ‘SupportEncryption’. If you don’t change the encryption type you will receive an error: ‘there was an encryption mismatch between you and xxxx’.

Here is how you do it:

set-csmediaconfiguration -encryption supportencryption

All should now work.

Good luck.

NeilC

Good news!!! Risual has completed the Lync TRP program and we have now been certified by Microsoft as a ‘Lync-Ready Voice Partner with Microsoft Unified Communications’.

This means that Risual are again ahead of the curve with regards to gaining certification on the latest and greatest Communications product pre-general release (Lync RTM Virtual Launch – www.microsoft.com/lync/launch).

Risual can now hit the ground running with both the knowledge to offer customers and a fully Microsoft vetted and tested Lync deployment to back it up with.

NeilC

We recently removed the OCS R2 Mediation Server from our Lync environment which was the last little bit of backward compatibility kit we had in.

Everything worked pretty well after I had configured the gateway to route calls to the new Lync Mediation Server and visa-versa. One problem that did cause me a significant head-ache however, was the Routing Groups.

For some reason, as soon as I started using the Lync Mediation Server the auto-forwarding of out-of-hours calls would just disconnect…. When making calls in over PSTN to one of the Routing Groups, which was now operating in out-of-hours mode and forwarding calls to a mobile, the call would connect to the RG then immediately disconnect. However, if you dialled the same number from the Lync client it would work without any problems at all ????????

The resolution…..

Remove  the tick from ‘Enable refer support’ on the Global Trunk Configuration page. This option was disabled by default on OCS R2 but enabled by default on Lync. It seems to cause bedlam with auto-forwarding on Routing Groups for some reason.

Hopefully this will save someone else the time and head-ache it caused me.

Neil

Linked to my previous post around mailbox exports I had a need to run a mailbox export from a scheduled task (as it was going to take several days and my session would be reset if left idle for too long), so a scheduled task felt like a good solution, setup a scheduled task & manually start it. 

With the change to remote PowerShell with PowerShell 2 you have to do things a little differently than previously (where you could simply use import-module to load the exchange management ps commandlets), to do this for Exchange 2010 I did the following:

• Create a scheduled task with no schedule and the following action:
• Action: Start a program
• Program / script: powershell.exe
• Add arguments: -command ". ‘c:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\bin\RemoteExchange.ps1′; Connect-ExchangeServer -auto; c:\pathtoscript\script.ps1"
• On the general tab change the security options to look like this (the user account needs to have the required level of privilege granted by Exchange to do what ever it is your script has asked):
• 
• The ‘Run with highest privileges option’ was key for me, with that un-ticked the powershell process would start but nothing would actually happen, this is akin to pressing yes when prompted by the UAC dialog when you launch Exchange PowerShell.

You can then either setup a schedule if required or run the script on demand.

Rob

With the arrival of Exchange 2010 SP1 the process around mailbox import and export, along with the requirements around it have changed significantly (for the better). 

Under Exchange 2010 RTM the export import process required Outlook 2010 x64 to be installed on the mailbox server where the export was taking place, there were several issues with this, firstly when Exchange 2010 launched Outlook 2010 was a beta product & more to the point you probably didn’t want Outlook installed on your mailbox servers.  Another key issue was that the reliability of the process was pretty poor – sometimes it would just work, other times it would refuse altogether (leaving the admin with the option of having an Exchange server which was also a DC, which resolved the issue) or as happened to me recently it would work for a while and then stop.  Another key issue is the need to run the export interactively, I generally got around this with a scheduled task.  Clearly this isn’t a robust scalable option.

So Exchange SP1 came along and the process has changed radically, some key changes:

• No requirement for Outlook to be installed on the server
• A changed set of criteria parameters allowing more flexibility to be applied to what is exported
• The process is no longer dependant on the PowerShell session used to start it, once submitted the process will run in the background, under the ‘Exchange Trusted Subsystem’ privilege – the location for your import / export must grant this group read / write access

The last option is the one which pleases me most (well shortly followed by the first), much like a mailbox move in 2010 you use the new-mailbox(export/import)request commandlet to request that exchange perform a mailbox export, once the request is submitted you are free to log off the server & walk away, your import / export will continue in the background.  You can view the status of mailbox imports and exports with the Get-mailbox(import/export)request commandlet. 

More detail on these commandlets is published on technet:

Managing mailbox imports and exports: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee633479.aspx

New-MailboxExportRequest: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff459227.aspx

New-MailboxImportRequest: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff459261.aspx