Deploying Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (Part 6)

If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

Introduction

If you have downloaded the media from MSDN, you are probably given a choice to work with Enterprise and Standard versions from the same media. The Auto play option will open up the file CD_Screen.htm on an Internet Explorer session where you can decide which version you want to install.

In our environment we opted to use the Standard Edition, so, let us click on the Standard Edition link on that page (as shown in Figure 1). As soon as you start the OCS 2007R2 Deployment Wizard, which is the tool that will help you out along the way of the OCS deployment process, a dialog box asking for Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 installation will be displayed, click Yes as shown in Figure 2.


Figure 1


Figure 2

After installing Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 the OCS 2007 R2, the Deployment Wizard will show up (Figure 3). This tool makes it easier to deploy the product because all the steps are presented in a list format, in this article we are going to click on the first link which is Prepare Active Directory.


Figure 3

OCS 2007 R2: Active Directory Preparation Process

The first section of the OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard is the Active Directory preparation. When you click on that link, a new page will be displayed containing all steps that we are going to perform in this article (Figure 4).


Figure 4

The Active Directory Preparation process is a straight forward process and can be performed using the OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard or using the command-line utility LCScmd.exe. In this article series we are going to cover both methods. Basically, the process will prepare the environment in the order shown in Figure 5.


Figure 5

Each Active Directory Preparation phase requires a certain level of permissions in Active Directory, the minimum requirements are shown in the table below.

Step Minimum Requirements
Schema Must be member of the Schema Admins group
Forest Must be member of the Enterprise Admins group in the forest root domain
Domain Member of either Enterprise Admins group or Domain Admins group

Table 1

If you are not certain that you have enough permissions, just open a command prompt and run net user <Your-User-Name> /domain (Figure 6) and if you are not listed on those groups from the table above, add yourself into those groups and a log off and a log on will be required.


Figure 6

Okay, now it’s time to have some fun, and let us prepare our Active Directory to OCS 2007 R2 in the following sections.

OCS 2007 R2: Schema Preparation

The Schema preparation will add classes and attributes that will be used by OCS Server. These steps below can be performed to prepare the Schema using the OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard.

  1. Click on Prepare Active Directory in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard
  2. Click on Run located on the Step 1: Prep Schema Section
  3. In the Welcome to the Schema Preparation Wizard page of the Wizard, click Next

     

  4. In the Directory Location of Schema Files page, leave the default settings, and click Next. If for some reason you have the schema files in a different folder, you select the new folder on this page. Also if you want to see the attributes that will be added to your schema beforehand you can check the file X:\Setup\Amd64\schema.ldf file out, where X: is your OCS 2007 R2 media drive. (Figure 7)


Figure 7

  1. In the Ready to Prepare Schema page. Just click Next
  2. In the final page, the setup process will warn you if everything went fine and you always have a chance to check the logs selecting the option View the log files when you click Finish and this option will open an Internet Explorer session containing all steps executed during the process and status of each tasks. Click Finish

In order to do the same procedure using command-line, these are the steps required:

  1. Open a command-prompt and go to the X:\Setup\adm64 (where X: is the media with your OCS 2007 R2 installation bits)
  2. Run the following command:
    LCScmd /Forest /Action:SchemaPrep

We can also use LCScmd utility to validate if the Schema Preparation was done properly, just run the following command and the output will be an html file that can be opened on a web browser.

LCScmd /Forest /Action:CheckSchemaPrepState

OCS 2007 R2: Forest Preparation

The Forest preparation should be run in the root domain of the forest and basically it will create Universal Groups, and global settings. In order to prepare the forest using OCS 2007 R2 Deployment wizard these following steps can be used:

  1. Click on Prepare Active Directory in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard
  2. Click on Run located on the Step 3: Prep Forest Section
  3. In the Welcome to the Forest Preparation Wizard page of the Wizard, click Next

     

  4. In the Select Location to Store Global Settings page, we have to decide where the OCS Global Settings will be stored. Microsoft recommendation for OCS 2007 R2 is to store the Global settings in the Configuration partition. Let’s use default settings (Figure 8) and click Next

 


Figure 8

  1. In the Location of Universal Groups page. The domain where the groups created by this process will be created, we have a single domain, so let’s leave the default settings and click Next. (Figure 9)


Figure 9

  1. In the SIP domain used for default routing page. Here we can define the SIP domain for the default routing, and by default is the Forest FQDN name. We have already defined our external domain name in our Exchange Recipient policy and here we are going to do the same, let us use only the external name and type in andersonpatricio.org and click Next. (Figure 10)


Figure 10

  1. In the Ready to Prepare Forest page. A summary containing what we have seen so far will be displayed, click on Next to start the Forest preparation process
  2. In the final page you should receive the same display which is “Forest Preparation Wizard has completed successfully” (Figure 11). Like any other OCS 2007 R2 installation wizard, you can always see the log files selecting the last checkbox. Click on Finish


Figure 11

To prepare the forest using command-line the following syntax is required:

  1. Open a command-prompt and go to the X:\Setup\adm64 (where X: is the media with your OCS 2007 R2 installation bits)
  2. Run the following command:
    LCScmd /Forest /Action:ForestPrep

In order to validate the procedure that we have just done, just run the command below. During the forest preparation the Universal Groups and global settings are created. We can see the universal groups created during setup in Figure 12.

LCScmd /Forest /Action:CheckForestPrepState


Figure 12

OCS 2007 R2: Domain Preparation

The last step during the OCS 2007 R2 preparation process is the domain preparation Wizard, we have to run Domain preparation in each domain that will contain either OCS Server or OCS enabled users. The process will create Access Control Entries (ACEs) using the Universal Groups created in the previous forest preparation step. These are the steps that can be used to prepare the domain using OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard:

  1. Click on Prepare Active Directory in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard
  2. Click on Run located on the Step 5: Prep Current Domain Section
  3. In the Welcome to the Domain Preparation Wizard page, click Next
  4. In the Domain Preparation Information page, click Next
  5. In the Ready to Prepare Domain page, click Next
  6. On the final page, if everything went smoothly, you will receive the “Domain Preparation Wizard has completed successfully” icon. You can now click on Finish, or check the option View the log when you click Finish, to identify which components of this process may have failed.

In order to prepare the current domain using command-line, these following steps can be used:

LCScmd /domain /Action:DomainPrep

Note:
If you want to specify a different domain, you can use the switch /domain:<FQDN of the domain>, if you leave blank the current domain will be used.

In order to validate the Domain Preparation process, you can run the following command and check out the file generated by the procedure:

LcsCmd.exe /domain:<FQDN AD domain name> /action:CheckDomainPrepState

Wrapping Up

The OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard does a great job at tracking the tasks that have been finished, and at this point we can see that we finished the Active Directory preparation phase, as shown in Figure 13.

Step 7 of this current page is optional, basically you can delegate Setup and Administration of OCS to different accounts and groups, most of the steps are manual done through LCScmd.exe utility. Let’s click on Back button.


Figure 13

Conclusion

So far so good, we have deployed Active Directory, Certificate Services, and Exchange Server and we have just started the preparation of our Active Directory to support OCS. In the next article we are going to start the OCS Deployment process.

If you would like to read the other parts in this article series please go to:

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