Deploying Exchange Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (Part 7)

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

OCS 2007 R2: Deployment Process

The first section of the OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard is the Active Directory preparation. As soon as we get it sorted, as we did in the previous article, we can then click on Back and the OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard page will look like it does in Figure 1.

Now, it is time to start deploying our first OCS Server, so in order to start the process let us click on Deploy Standard Edition Server.


Figure 1

The OCS 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard also has a step-by-step to deploy the server, as shown in Figure 2. Since we already installed all the pre-requisites for the Operating System, including the Features and Roles required for OCS, our process, from here on, is going to be a straight forward series of tasks.


Figure 2

In this article we are going to cover the first three steps and in the next article we are going to finalize the OCS 2007 R2 deployment.

Deploying the server

The first phase of the deployment process is to install the OCS 2007 R2 bits on the server. These following steps can be used to deploy the OCS server.

  1. Let us click on the first Run button located in the Step 1: Deploy Server section to start the process to deploy and configure our OCS Server.
  2. You may be prompted to install the Windows Media Format Runtime (Figure 3), if so a restart will be required, click on OK and wait for the installation process for that component and then restart the computer.


Figure 3

  1. After restarting, click again on the Run button like we did before and the first page of the Deploy Server Wizard will show up, just click Next.
  2. In the License Agreement page. If you agree with the contract, select I accept the terms in the license agreement and click OK.
  3. In the Location for Server Files page. We can specify where OCS 2007 R2 server files will be installed, the default value is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2\ and it sounds good for us. Let’s click on Next.
  4. In the Application Configuration page. We can decide which applications will be configured in the current server (Figure 04). The process to manage applications can be done afterwards from the console.  We are not going to install any application at this point, uncheck all applications and click on Next.
    Note:
    Application Configuration is a new feature of OCS 2007 R2, these are a brief summary of each one of the available applications:
    – Conferencing Attendant: Allow PSTN users to join to a conference hosted in OCS
    – Conferencing Announcement Service: This application notifies users in a conferencing, such as: announcing new users or users that are leaving the conference, also notifies them if they have been muted and unmuted
    – Response Group Service: This application is able to answer and distribute calls to a pre-defined available agent
    – Outside Voice Control: Users using Mobile Communicator or Mobile for Java can use this new application as an intermediary to connect their mobile devices and UC endpoints. The mobile becomes an UC endpoint.


Figure 4

  1. In the Main Service Account for Standard Edition Server page. We can use an existent account or create a new one. We are going to create a new account and password for the main service account. We are also going to use the name recommended by the installation wizard which is RTCService, as shown in Figure 5.


Figure 5

  1. In the Component Service Account for this Standard Edition Server page. Now, we need to create a username and password to the Component Service (Figure 6), let us use the setup recommendation for account name and specify a password, click on Next.

 


Figure 6

  1. In the Web Farm FQDNs page. In this page we can define the address where users will be able to download content meeting and Address book data (Figure 7). We are not going to deploy an external infrastructure at this point, let’s keep just the internal server name and click Next.


Figure 7

  1. In the Location for Database Files page. We can specify where the databases used by OCS 2007 will be on the file system (Figure 8). The recommendation is always to separate database and log files in different set of disks. OCS 2007 R2 will use 2 databases (one with the persistent user data containing ACLs, contacts, OCS home server and scheduled conferences; and a second for transient user data, such as endpoints and subscriptions). After deciding the path for the OCS databases, click on Next.


Figure 8

  1. In the Ready to Deploy Server page. A summary with all configurations that we have done so far will be displayed, click on Next to start the process.
  2. In the final page, if everything went fine for you, the last page will display the Deploy Server Wizard has completed successfully message. Then, just click Finish. If any error occurs during the process the checkbox to view the log files will be checked automatically and then you can analyze the log files to identify the issue.

Configuring Server….

The previous step installed the SQL, configured services accounts and installed the OCS files on the server. Now it’s time to configure the service and define which are going to be the SIP domains, external access and etc. The Configuration process can be done through these following steps:

  1. Make sure that the section Step 1: Deploy Server has a Complete flag on it.
  2. In the Welcome to the Configure Pool/Server Wizard page. Click on Next.
  3. In the Server or Pool to Configure page. Select our current server (in our scenario is SRV-OCS) and click Next, as shown in Figure 9.


Figure 9

  1. In the SIP domains page. Here we are going to enter all domains that our future users can use to log on OCS (Figure 10). In our scenario we are a small company and we have a single public domain and we do not want any user trying to log on using the FQDN of the domain.


Figure 10

  1. In the Client Logon Settings page. We are going to use automatic logon process to our clients and we are going to designate this server to allow automatic logon requests from our OCS clients, as shown in Figure 11.


Figure 11

  1. In the SIP Domains for Automatic Logon page. If you have more than one domain you can decide which one will be supported by the current server for automatic logon (Figure 12). In our scenario, we have just one, let us check it and click on Next.

 


Figure 12

  1. In the External User Access Configuration page. In the current phase of our deployment we are not going to configure external user access at this point, let us select Do not configure for external user access now (Figure 13) and click Next.


Figure 13

  1. In the Ready to Configure Server or Pool page. A summary of we have configured so far will be displayed, click on Next.
  2. In the final page, we should receive the display Configure Server or Pool Wizard has completed successfully, if so, just click on Finish and let us continue our deployment process (Figure 14).


Figure 14

Certificates

This section may bring up some questions by the administrator and I hope to shed some light on this process. This process impacts the automatic logon process that we are going over in the next articles and if you do not use the certificates properly you may have some issues to download your Address Book, authentication and so on. A good thing about Front-End servers is that they do not require Public Certificates and all certificate needs can be handled internally using a PKI infrastructure (we created that infrastructure in our first articles). In order to request and assign certificate to the OCS Front-End server, these following steps can be followed:

  1. In the initial page, just click Next.
  2. In the Available Certificate Tasks page. This page contains the main tasks that an OCS Administrator requires to manage certificates, and we can find the same wizard using the OCS 2007 R2 Management Console afterwards. Because we do not have any certificate in place, let us select the option where we are going to use an internal CA. Let’s click on Create a new certificate and click Next, as shown in Figure 15.


Figure 15

  1. In the Delayed or Immediate Request page. If the certificate is going to be issued by an internal CA, the first option is when you have an internal PKI however if you are going to send it out to a Public Certification Authority the second option will be required. Click on Next.
  2. In the Name and Security Settings page. We need to label the certificate, by default the certificate name is the NetBIOS name of the server, also the option to mark the cert as exportable is selected. Click on Next.
  3. In the Organization Information page. Fill this page out using your company’s information and click Next.
  4. In the Your Server’s Subject Name page. That’s the most important page of the Certificate Wizard, we need to define all names that will be used by OCS Server, and it will impact the single sign-on process if a proper name is not configured. OCS like Exchange Server supports SAN (Subject Alternative Names), in order to keep it simple, we are going to use the FQDN name of the server as Subject Name and in the SAN we are going to use sip.andersonpatricio.org (Figure 16).The single sign-on process performed by Office Communicator Client requires that certificates and DNS configurations match in order to have an end-user logon without any manual configuration.
    Note:
    In the article related to the client configuration we are going over the automatic logon process. So far we configured all users to use the public SIP domain which is the same for Exchange Server, and also created the split-DNS configuration for that domain. In this section we are assigning a certificate for the same domain and down the road we are going to complete the loop with the DNS SRV records.


Figure 16

  1. In the Geographical Information page. Fill this page out using your company’s information and click Next.
  2. In the Choose a Certification Authority page. Do you remember that long list of steps to build the Enterprise CA? Now, we are starting to put all pieces together. In this section we are going to request to that CA a certificate for our OCS Server. Let us now select an available CA from the list and click on Next, as shown in Figure 17.


Figure 17

  1. In the Request Summary page. Review the settings that we have done and to start the process click on Next.
  2. In the Assign Certificate Task page. Because we are using our internal CA the certificate request will be processed automatically which means that we can assign it to our server right away. Let us select Assign certificate immediately and then Next, as shown in Figure 18.


Figure 18

  1. In the Configure the Certificate(s) of your Server page. A summary of the certificate task that will be performed will be displayed, click Next.
  2. In the final page, the result should be the Certificate Wizard completed successfully message. Click on Finish.

Conclusion

In this article we have finished the first three steps for the OCS 2007 R2 Deployment. So far, we have installed, configured, and assigned certificates to the product. In the next article, we are going to play a little bit more with certificates, start the services, learn how to manage OCS users and validate the installation process.

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

About The Author

Anderson Patricio is a Canadian MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management, and Office Server and Services, besides of the Microsoft Award he also holds a Solutions Master (MCSM) in Exchange, CISSP and several other certifications. Anderson contributes to the Microsoft Community with articles, tutorials, blog posts, twitter, forums and book reviews. He is a regular contributor here at Techgenix.com, MSExchange.org, ITPROCentral.com and Anderson Patricio.org (Portuguese).

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