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موضوع: Office Communications Server 2007: Microsoft goes VoIP

  
  1. #1
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    Office Communications Server 2007: Microsoft goes VoIP

    کد:
    http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Office-Communications-Server-2007-Microsoft-VoIP-Part1.html
    PART-1


    Microsoft has entered the world of VoIP telephone systems with its Office Communications Server platform. But will Redmond make an impact in this crowded space? Here, the standards and strategic position of this new product are revealed and explored.
    Office Communications Server 2007: Microsoft goes VoIP

    Microsoft has officially entered the domain of IP telephony, and the industry is both excited and wary. The excitement is due to the potential of an all-MS IP communications solution; alongside Exchange messaging, Active Directory, instant messaging, and the Office Communicator client, a Windows-based IP telephony server certainly has its appeals. The wariness, on the other hand, probably stems from Microsoft’s stalwart reputation for “flavoring” the standards they choose to build their solutions, and perhaps from their relatively late entrance into the VoIP arena.
    Not very long ago - meaning 24 months or so - Microsoft was on record as saying they were not interested in producing a Microsoft-branded PBX (private branch exchange) telephone system. In fact, some people at Microsoft told me that Redmond was looking to sell software to run on Avaya, Shoretel, and Cisco chassis, in much the same way Windows Server runs on Cisco’s CallManager PBX server. At that time, the standard response was, “We would love to sell our software to those guys.”
    A New PBX Strategy for Microsoft

    But, as with all industries Microsoft creeps into, the arrival of a full-blown Microsoft PBX platform was inevitable. The impact of such a product on the telecom equipment business - and on your business - may be significant. So before we peek under the hood of Microsoft’s new unified communications environment, let us take a look at what we know, and what is still a mystery, about Microsoft’s rookie VoIP server product.
    Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced the beta version of Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS), which took Live Communications Server 2005 as a starting point and added VoIP support, allowing desktop PCs and IP telephones to place and receive calls. OCS keeps all of its predecessor’s features, which included instant messaging with presence and e-mail. New to OCS is the ability to act as a telephone switch. A telephone switch is a device that connects calls between phones on a network. Typically, these phones all use the same signaling protocol, be it a legacy standard like those used on the public telephone network, or a next-generation VoIP standard.
    Indeed, because of Microsoft’s decision to support the VoIP standard known as SIP (session initiation protocol), OCS will support a wide range of handsets, conference stations, and paging equipment. Users of Microsoft’s Office Communicator software will also be able to place and receive SIP-based phone calls. This has sweeping implications for all kinds of telephony applications - imagine a customer support helpdesk with voice, video, and desktop sharing all integrated into a singularly managed server application, or a laptop user who is able to take his software-based phone with him anywhere on the network. Sure, none of this stuff is really new - it’s just new to Microsoft.
    SIP also empowers OCS to communicate with other VoIP-enabled PBX systems, allowing calls to be switched between phone users on an OCS server and those on, say, an Avaya Media Server. This is an important consideration for administrators who are considering adding OCS to an existing IP telephony network, or for those considering a wholesale switch to the Microsoft-based telephony solution.
    Office Communications Server offers mobility to SIP users, too. While it’s always been difficult to support mobile users on a SIP-based PBX, due to problems with NAT firewalls that are so commonly encountered on the road, Microsoft has wisely adopted the ICE family of standards for mobility and firewall traversal, which it helped to create.
    What remains to be seen, however, is just how well an all-OCS phone system performs in an intensive enterprise environment - and there are some hard limitations. For example, OCS’s video-conferencing features work only with on-premise users, though Microsoft offers OCS users the ability to do off-premise conferences using the hosted LiveMeeting service. Beyond web conferencing, there have been very few field reports about the SIP capabilities of OCS. SIP is a very capable protocol, allowing set up of video calls, text messaging, and other forms of streaming media, though OCS is limited in its support of SIP’s vast array of media setup capabilities. This is nothing unique though - most IP telephony vendors who support SIP only support a subset of what can be done with the protocol. It’s not uncommon for a SIP-based PBX to support just telephone calls and not text messaging or video.
    Then there is the issue of scalability. Microsoft’s documentation for OCS indicates that it will function in a multi-server configuration, for reasons of fault-tolerance and scale. Of course, even with this in mind, Microsoft isn’t advising anybody to dump a current phone system and switch whole-heartedly to Office Communications Server. Beta is beta, after all. Plus, it’s still not fully understood if Redmond is positioning OCS against the likes of well-entrenched players like Nortel, Siemens, and Cisco, or if the desire is to cooperate on telco turf. Ghostly echoes of Novell NetWare abound.
    And that’s the real issue: It’s not exactly clear what Microsoft’s strategic goals for OCS actually are. Is there any intention of making OCS the mature, Avaya-slaying warrior that Microsoft geeks have been dreaming of? Or is OCS just another side product that ends up a free add-in feature (like Sharepoint) or something that gathers dust in the janitor’s closet at MS headquarters, never really gaining widespread acceptance or innovating (like ISA Server)?
    Open Standards, Closed Platform

    Standards purists continue to question Microsoft’s approach to SIP, despite overwhelming consensus that SIP was the right choice for OCS. Office Communicator, Microsoft’s SIP client software for Microsoft Office, only works with OCS - that is, you can’t mate it with another SIP server. So if you need Office Communicator (instant messaging, voice calls, video calls), then you’re basically stuck using OCS. Perhaps at some point, Communicator will get along with other SIP servers, just as Office Outlook supports e-mail servers other than Exchange.
    The stated reason for this limitation is Active Directory. Microsoft wants to deliver a fully-integrated enterprise telephony experience, and this means leveraging the ubiquitous directory service in OCS and Office Communicator. Just about everybody with a Windows networking environment uses Active Directory for authentication and centralized resource management, so the implications for a phone system are obvious. When combined with Exchange 2007’s new voicemail features, “click-to-call” and “click-to-voicemail” shortcuts within Outlook, the vision of an all-Microsoft telecom network really begins to take shape.
    In the Pipeline

    Just because Active Directory is central to OCS’s functionality doesn’t mean that non-PC devices like IP phones will be excluded from the party. Indeed, Polycom has already shown a WiFi IP phone that runs an embedded version of the Office Communicator software - and the user interface on this phone is nearly identical to that of the PC version. Microsoft has also demonstrated unbranded hardphones that contain a Communicator-like interface - with indications for waiting messages, contact lists, and the other goodies that are a part of the desktop Communicator software.
    Microsoft is rumored to be working on a proprietary new sound codec, too, aiming to optimize the quality of calls even in a low-bandwidth environment. The name or characteristics of this codec haven’t leaked out yet, but it appears Redmond chose not to license a codec from market-leading Global IP sound, which produces the adaptive (variable bit-rate) codec currently used by Skype and other major VoIP players. What’s more, Microsoft’s codec is software-based, meaning it doesn’t require DSP hardware and can be implemented anywhere Windows runs - mobile devices, next-generation low-cost IP phones, and certainly a future version of Office Communicator.
    In the next installment of this column, I’m going to rip the lid off of Office Communications Server and Office Communicator, pit them against open source alternatives, and get these old hands dirty discovering if OCS is really ready for prime time. I invite you to do the same. You can download the Office Communications Server 2007 Beta at

    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/communicationsserver






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  2. #2
    نام حقيقي: 1234

    مدیر بازنشسته
    تاریخ عضویت
    Jul 2009
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    کد:
    http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Office-Communications-Server-2007-Microsoft-VoIP-Part2.html
    PART-2

    Installing, configuring and beginning to use Microsoft Office Communications Server

    Microsoft Office Communications Server turns Office Communicator into an indispensable conferencing, VoIP and messaging tool for Windows desktop. Find out how to install, configure and begin using Office Communications Server in this hands-on introduction.
    Why OCS?

    In my previous piece, I looked at the strategic importance of Microsoft’s relatively new Office Communications Server (OCS). Microsoft has made it clear that they want in on the action in the telecommunications sector, and they are applying a familiar strategy: make a solution that runs on Windows, make it available en masse and for free, and then begin to displace established players in the space.
    OCS just happens to run on Windows—and that fact alone makes it preferable to many system administrators who have stronger data-networking skills than old-school telecom skills. But simply running on Windows is not a good enough reason to justify an enterprise’s wholesale switch to OCS from an Avaya PBX or a Cisco CallManager.
    Instead, OCS fills in some important blanks in other players’ telephony solutions. OCS provides desktop telephony with instant messaging and web-conferencing in a manner that takes advantage of Active Directory, giving Windows Administrators control over all that Office Communicator, Redmond’s desktop telephony application, has to offer. This positions OCS well against competing products from the likes of Citrix, Polycom, and Cisco, which do not play well with Active Directory.
    In addition to VoIP telephony and conferencing, OCS also introduces desktop sharing and application sharing, which makes it a great collaboration solution. Users with access to the same pool of OCS servers can talk, message, conference, and now collaborate using shared views and controls of Windows desktop applications.
    Architectural Overview of OCS

    OCS is available in two editions - Standard and Enterprise. The key difference is that Standard hosts all server components on a single Windows server, whereas Enterprise allows the systems engineer to dedicate different servers to different roles. These roles are organized into pools and can be load-balanced and tied to a dedicated back-end database server, if desired. The feature set of the two editions is the same; the only difference is scalability.
    Specialized servers are provided with OCS to deal with specific applications of the suite:

    • The IM Conferencing Server provides group-enabled instant text messaging.
    • The Web Conferencing Server enables multiparty data collaboration and application sharing.
    • The A/V Conferencing Server provides audio and video conferencing.
    • The Telephony Conferencing Server facilitates audio conference integration with external telephony conference services.

    Microsoft also provides a suite of specialized proxy services which enable you to support the use of OCS with firewalled users. These are called “Edge Servers”, and OCS includes one for supporting SIP traffic from external networks such as the Internet (SIP is the standard protocol used by VoIP phones, one for web conferencing with Internet based users, and one for A/V conferencing with Internet-based users).
    Getting Started

    By the end of this series, we will have built a fully functional OCS site, but there are a few things you will need first. There are two pieces of software we are concerned with: Office Communicator - the client and OCS - the server. Office Communicator itself requires Windows XP or Windows Vista, while OCS requires Windows Server 2003 running in an Active Directory domain, not a workgroup. RAM is not hugely important to OCS, though it would not be wise to install OCS on a production server, so pick a spare PC with Server 2003, make sure it does not have any other important duties, and you are good to go. One other thing - make sure your server is patched to Service Pack 1 at a minimum.
    As with many of Microsoft’s other server software solutions, OCS leverages Internet Information Server (IIS), so you will need to make sure that all the requisite IIS services are installed and running on your Windows Server prior to installation of OCS. Make sure the following services are running: World Wide Web Publishing, IIS Admin, and RPC. OCS also requires .Net Framework 2.0, which it will install if you haven’t already. The SQL Server components that OCS requires will be installed automatically by the OCS installer, so if you do not have SQL Server up and running, do not fret.
    Active Directory Preparation

    OCS requires a special subset of object classes and service groups in Active Directory (AD), so your AD schema needs to be updated before adding an instance of OCS to your network. Fortunately, Microsoft offers two methods of performing this update. The simplest method is to use the wizards provided in the MSI setup package, which you can download from:
    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/co...r/default.aspx
    Snag a copy of Office Communicator while you’re at it. Place the downloaded MSI package on your server in a temporary staging folder and then run it. This will create a setup folder in the path you choose. From here, you’ll launch the OCS installer.
    Since OCS requires a Windows 2003 Native domain (and cannot work in a mixed-mode or Windows 2000 domain), you will need to make sure your domain is running at the Windows 2003 functional level. To do this, open Active Directory Domains and Trusts in MMC (you can find this in the Administrative Tools submenu of the Start Menu on one of your domain’s domain controller servers). Then, right click the node with your domain’s name. Select ‘Raise Domain Functional Level’ as in figure 1.

    Figure 1: Raising Domain Functional Level
    Finally, select Windows Server 2003 from the drop-down list and click Raise, as in Figure 2. Keep in mind that once you have made the leap to the native domain functional level, there is no going back. This is why I stress keeping your OCS testing off of your production network, especially if your production AD needs to run at a lower functional level.

    Figure 2:
    Selecting the domain functional level
    Now, you can use the Deployment Wizard, shown in Figure 3, to perform the Active Directory updates. Run it from your domain controller’s server console. Be sure you are logged in as a member of the domain administrators group. There are three AD updates that will be run: Prep Schema, Prep Forest, and Prep Current Domain. All are available through options in the Setup utility for OCS. Run them in order. If you have only one domain controller in your testing environment, as I do, then you can skip the verification steps in between them.

    Figure 3:
    OCS 2007 Deployment Wizard
    Installation

    Once the Deployment Wizard steps for Active Directory updating are done, you are ready to install OCS. Re-run the setup utility from the folder where you unpacked the downloaded MSI package, and click the “Deploy Standard Edition Server” link. Then, click the Run button next to the “Deploy Server” label. The only wizard step worth taking note of here is the Web Farm FQDN step, where you are prompted to enter the address of a server that can be used for aggregation of distribution group and address book information. In this case, we are just going to use the host name of the local host - the server where we are installing OCS.
    The following step, Location for Database Files (shown in Figure 4), asks you where you want the installer to build the databases that will be used by OCS. It would not be a good idea to store these on your system disk (usually C or your swap partition, if you are using a dedicated one. Once you finish this step, breeze through the rest of the wizard.

    Figure 4:
    Location for Database Files
    There is no need to install SQL Server either; the necessary components will be set up by the installation wizard automatically. This takes a few minutes, so grab a cup of coffee.
    OCS Initial Configuration

    The third step in the Deployment Wizard window is the Configure Pool/Server Wizard - run it now. The first step is to select the server you want to configure - by default, you will be offered the name of the server you just installed, which is what we want. (See Figure 5.) Click Next, and you will be prompted to create a list of local SIP domains.

    Figure 5:
    Select an OCS server to configure
    A SIP domain is a top-level organizational unit for SIP endpoints, equivalent to and often named identically to an Internet domain. A SIP endpoint is any device that participates in media sessions using the SIP protocol - these could be servers, PBXs, web conferencing software programs, IP phones, or any other device that uses SIP to establish media sessions. In this case, accept the default suggestion, which should be the name of the Active Directory domain name in which this server is a member.
    Keep in mind, a SIP domain may or may not be the same as your Windows domain name. In a public, Internet-connected SIP environment, it will likely be something different, as SIP domains are intended to be used with the Internet-standard top-level domain scheme. Too cut a long story short - using your Windows domain name is fine for inside-your-premise use of OCS, but if your Windows domain name is not resolvable by DNS on the public Internet, then you will be in violation of the SIP standard if you attempt to use it there.
    In the Client Logon Settings step, I would suggest selecting “Clients will be configured manually for logon”. This will give us an opportunity to explore client configurations in greater detail later on. At the following step, choose “do not configure for external user access” and click Next. Finish the wizard, and you are ready to move to the next configuration step.
    The next step in the setup utility is the Certificate Wizard, which will generate encryption certificates that can be utilized by the web conferencing server to create secure connections across the network. After the welcome, select “create a new certificate” and click Next. Submit the automatically-generated certificate request to the local server, whatever its name is. If the Certificate Authority is installed on the local server, then its name will automatically appear for selection. If not, you will need to visit Add/Remove Windows Components in Control Panel and install Certificate Services. Once Certificate Services is running, you can generate and validate the certificate needed by OCS.
    Finally, click the Run button for step 7, Start Services. If you have done everything correctly, OCS will fire up and you can move to the final step, Validate Server Functionality.
    Install Office Communicator on a Workstation

    Office Communicator 2007 is available in beta form, a free download from the address provided above. Installation is straightforward. Just run the installation wizard and you are ready to launch Communicator 2007 on your Windows desktop.
    What’s Next

    In the next installments of this OCS series, we will cover setting up instant messaging, voice and video conferencing, user administration, and some enhanced security and management features like I.M. filtering. We will even set up Communicator Web Access - so you can see how IIS can facilitate mobile instant messaging




  3. #3
    نام حقيقي: 1234

    مدیر بازنشسته
    تاریخ عضویت
    Jul 2009
    محل سکونت
    5678
    نوشته
    5,634
    سپاسگزاری شده
    2513
    سپاسگزاری کرده
    272
    کد:
    http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Office-Communications-Server-2007-Hands-On-Part3.html
    PART-3

    In the previous installment in this series, I described the architectural overview of Office Communications Server and explained the steps necessary to operate the OCS software:

    • Prerequisite software
    • Active Directory domain preparation
    • OCS 2007 software deployment
    • Initial configuration

    In this installment, I’ll describe how to get your first group of Office Communicator clients logged in and chatting. I’ll also show you how to perform day-to-day administration of the solution. By now you should have OCS installed and the Office Communicator client installed on a Windows XP or Vista workstation. It would be helpful, though not required, to have Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 running on this workstation, too.
    User Administration for OCS

    Once you’ve got OCS installed and all the services are running on your Windows server, you’ll need to create (or modify the existing) users who are going to use Office Communications Server. Typically, this involves editing the users’ objects in Active Directory. There are other means of storing user information for OCS, but AD is the easiest to demonstrate and the most likely scenario for directing user community traffic in the enterprise.
    So fire up Active Directory Users and Computers and pick some user objects that you would like to grant access to the OCS. Select as many user objects as you wish. Then right click one of the group and select Enable Users for Communications Server, as seen in Figure 1. This will display a wizard to guide you through the essential setup of this group of OCS users.

    Figure 1:
    Enable users for Communications Server
    The first step in the Enable Office Communications Server Users Wizard is ‘Select Server or Pool’. If using the Standard edition of OCS, you’ll be selecting a server, as in Figure 2. If using the Enterprise edition, you’ll have the option of selecting a pool, which is a tandem of front-end and back-end OCS servers. Again, in this instance, we’re using the Standard edition, and we’ve chosen the example server ‘windows-server.wallingford’ from the drop-down list of available OCS in the AD schema.

    Figure 2:
    Select an OCS Server or Pool
    Once you have selected a server or pool, the following step allows you to specify the naming convention for SIP user names that will be used with the selected users on this particular OCS server (or pool). Your choices are the user’s e-mail address, corresponding to the one stored in Active Directory, if applicable, the user’s principal name, and two formats which include the name of a domain that defaults to the name of your Windows AD domain, as in Figure 3.

    Figure 3:
    Determine the SIP naming convention for users on this OCS server
    The fourth step of the wizard allows you to enable enhanced presence, a feature which will permit Office Communicator users to use more description presence notifiers than those normally associated with instant messaging (available, away, etc.). Using enhanced presence expands your options for dealing with the telephony capabilities of Office Communicator, such as call-forwarding and simultaneous ringing. (An external SIP proxy with access to phone lines—like an Asterisk server or a Cisco Media Gateway--is necessary in order to make these features work).

    Figure 4:
    User settings for OCS
    Once you’ve established all of the user settings using this wizard, you can begin using these user accounts with Office Communicator.
    Client Configuration: The Dos ad Don’ts

    Many people have a difficult time getting Office Communicator to work correctly the first time. If something isn’t set up right, then wiggling through initial login, certificate validation, and all the other junk that happens behind the scenes when you launch Communicator is daunting. So keep a few things in mind:

    • When setting up Communicator to talk to your OCS server (via DHCP or via the Settings option in Communicator), be sure to use the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of your server, as opposed to merely its hostname or IP address. The certificate generated for use by OCS is tied to the FQDN and Communicator will freak if the name isn’t exactly the same as the one in the certificate.
    • Make sure Active Directory-integrated DNS is working, as in part two of this series. This isn’t the sort of experiment you can conduct without Active Directory-integrated DNS running. That is, the DNS server on your home broadband router isn’t going to cut it for OCS.

    Running Communicator the First Time

    When you launch Office Communicator on your workstation, the first thing you’ll be prompted for is a Sign-in ID. Typically, this is your <user>@<domain> SIP URI designation. When you click sign-in, you’ll be asked for your login credentials, which, in this instance, consist of your credentials on the Active Directory, or your AD user name and password. Once logged in, you’ll see something similar to Figure 5. If the list appears blank at first, don’t panic. If you’ve never synchronized your address book to Office Communicator and you’ve never placed any calls or instant messages to other users, your contact lists will be empty.

    Figure 5:
    The Office Communicator Contact List
    Double-clicking any contact in the list will present you with a message window, from which you can proceed in two-way communications using text, voice, or video, depending on which icons you click. The icon shown on the far right of the toolbar in Figure 6 is used for sending files. Also included at the bottom of the message window are basic text formatting functions and a smiley menu.

    Figure 6:
    An Office Communicator Conversation
    When you click the video icon, your message window will show the video enabled by the remote participant(s) and by the local participant (you). Once a conversation is in progress, it’s very easy to include additional participants by clicking the Invite button.
    Setting up Voice and Video

    In order to make sure your video and voice features are working, you’ll need to go into the options menu of Communicator and step through the Audio and Video wizard. Select the video and audio sources you’d like to use and perform the sound test if you wish. Ideally, you’ll have a highly noise-canceling microphone or a headset in order to prevent acoustic echo.
    Tips for Testing OCS with a Limited Number of PCs

    This entire exercise was completed with a single PC tower (running the server portion) and a single Macbook Pro laptop (running two instances of Windows XP in Parallels Desktop). If you want to learn about OCS but only have one or two computers to work with, virtualization is the way to go. Don’t forget, you can also run Communicator on the server desktop if you need an extra client running.
    As an aside, I even tried to make a hack to allow Gizmo Project on the Mac to register with the OCS, but to no avail. A better illustration of SIP interop on OCS can be achieved with Counterpath’s free X-Lite softphone. Try calling one of your OCS users through X-Lite using that user’s SIP URI (user@domain). Just make sure your X-Lite client is using the same DNS server OCS is, or X-Lite won’t be able to resolve your Active Directory-integrated URIs.
    Desktop Collaboration and Web Conferencing

    In order to use Office Communications Server’s web conferencing facilities for desktop sharing and document markup, you’ll need to schedule conference time slots using Microsoft Outlook (2003 or 2007), not Office Communicator. While it would have been simpler to have an “Invite user to share my desktop” option in Communicator, Microsoft opted to make this a part of their Conferencing Add-in for Outlook instead.
    Once you’ve obtained and installed the add-in, Outlook will use the OCS settings from Communicator to afford you participation in web conferences using your Office Communications Server.
    Interop

    Interoperability with other systems is indeed something Microsoft supports with OCS, even if they don’t overtly condone it. As such, you can set up SIP peers to communicate audio and video sessions between users of OCS and, say, a Cisco CallManager or Asterisk PBX. We’ll cover this in a future installment of this series





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