There is plenty of good documentation available here, but when we followed it, we managed to import users, but they were detached from their meetings, and as those meetings had no owners, they in turn vanished. This could have been a disaster, but we had of course made a full system backup before we did anything.

So, the aim was essentially 2 separate processes; change the DNS suffix and lookup; make the system AD integrated somehow.
In integrating MeetingPlace Express with an external directory, there are 2 methods to do it, LDAP and AXL SOAP API. They will both authenticate against CUCM or a CUCM related/generated directory. It pretty much depends which version of Call Manager (CUCM) you’re running, for 4.x and earlier, ldap is recommended and for 5.x and above, AXL is supported. As I wanted to authenticate against Active Directory and not CUCM, I opted to do it with ldap, it’s by far the simplest way.

The procedure is like this:

Export all users to csv text file.
Log in to Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express and click Administration. Click System Configuration > Usage Configuration.
Complete the fields available

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager/ Cisco Unified CallManager version: Set this field to Cisco Unified CallManager Release 4.x
• LDAP URL: (Make sure that this URL starts with ldap) ldap://server.whateveryourdomain.com:389 (Make sure that there are no spaces after the URL)
• Directory username: Use the format of an LDAP distinguished name: cn=serviceaccount,dc=whateveryourdomain,dc=com
• Password: Self explanatory
• Cisco base: Leave blank if you are not using the Cisco Unified CallManager DC-Directory to authenticate Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express users.
• User base: dc=whateveryourdomain,dc=com
• Directory type: ADS  (Active Directory Services)
• Click Test LDAP Configuration to test that the configuration parameters work correctly.
• Click Save.

The test should dictate your success.
So, if like us you have existing users and want to convert them to AD authentication, you will need to take your exported file and modify it.

The procedure is like this:
1 Export all users again as before, safety first.
2 Open the file in Excel and then import as comer separated CSV
3 Edit text file, and modify field ISUSERLOCAL set to NO
4 Save the file, as csv, (however you cannot import using csv, the file MUST be text or it will corrupt on import)
5 Drop into a file manager and rename the file extension to .txt
6 Now import user TXT file and select the option to overwrite any existing users
7 Check you can now still login with AD credentials
8 Check meetings are all still visible. Test

Don’t change settings for admin users, or guest user as these must stay local.

You should not have all your users still with their existing meetings, but authenticating against Active Directory!

Now to change the domain suffix…

To change network parameters post installation, you can use the net command to modify the network configuration settings. To access the net command, you can use the Meeting Place terminal via the GUI, or SSH into it as the user called mpxadmin and then enter the command net.
In order to change the network settings, you must shut down the application by entering the following: sudo mpx_sys stop

The options pretty much speak for themselves, to change the DNS suffix, option 5; to change the DNS servers, option 6 and so on.
Option 8 when you’re done modifying settings, and don’t forget to reboot for the settings to take effect. (shutdown -r now)

With MeetingPlace now authenticating against your domain, any users who weren’t already enrolled will have accounts created on the fly when they attempt to login. It’s great, lowers the support overhead and is much quicker for the users too.

When a new user signs into the macbook with his Active Directory credentials, his account is created on the fly (assuming you’ve deployed your topology to do so). At the same time your Outlook 2011 profile will set itself up with your email address, and providing your Exchange DNS records are configured correctly, all server addressing will be configured on the fly.

So, here’s the scenario, new (to the macbook) user signs into Outlook, all appears well, his mail is there, contacts etc. He or she sends an email to colleagues who receive an emails where the From: field appears fine, as in it shows their name.
However when you reply, you notice that the To: field derives a ‘Microsoft Office User’ preface to the full email address.

You get a result that looks like this:

From: Luke Darby <Luke@lukedarby.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:24:11 +0000
To: Microsoft Office User <lukedarby@lukedarby.co.uk>
Subject: RE: I have a name you know!

Initially this was a huge issue for us as it seemed to be linked to the “This product is licenced to” field. In short, it’s not directly related, but indirect.

Outlook 2011 creates a contact for you when you first create a profile, called ‘Me’ If it doesn’t have all information available, it uses your email address and the licences to field. In Essence you get a ‘Me’ contact which has ‘Microsoft Office User’ as the contact First and Last Name and your Work E-mail completed with your primary SMTP alias.

Me contact

You find this contact by clicking on Contacts -> Organize -> Me

Outlook Me contact

Once in there, you can manually complete the details you want, OR….
Scroll down and you should see your AD Directory contact detail. A handy ‘Update Contact’ button is provided for convenience to fill all the fields for you.

Once done, restart Outlook for good measure and you won’t see the issue again. It’s annoying, but simple to solve, and the user can do it themselves.

If you gave the bulk distribution licences to name as something else, then you’ll need to change THAT name in your Me contact.

Anyway, all that said, Microsoft have released the patch, download it here.

However take note of the kb, pre reqs:Before you install the Communicator 2011 13.1.2 Update, make sure that the computer is running Mac OS X v10.5.8 or a later version of the Mac OS X operating system.
In other words, if you’re running the pre-release, GM or the full release, AND have regressed your Communicator 2011 install to 13.0.0 then the upgrade won’t work. A neat guideline is that if Microsoft Autoupdate doesn’t ‘find’ it, then you’ll get an install error like this

Thanks for the image Nick!

This is pre-release btw. To resolve this error make sure you install the ‘broken’ 13.1.x version update first, THEN the patch will install.

This is made clear in the KB : Additionally, you must install Microsoft Communicator for Mac 13.1.0 Update or a later update before you install the Communicator for Mac 13.1.2 Update.

Successful install of Communicator2011-13.1.2

So to recap, the patch will install on pretty much any version of Lion or Snow Leopard(tested), but you must have patched Communicator to 13.1.0 minimum for it to install. If you regressed your install to 13.0.0, then patch it again, THEN install 13.1.2. Easy way to do this is let AutoUpdate work for you.

Anyway good news for a lot of folk who have put their money into Communicator/Lync etc, justifying the spend on these products is tough enough without having to explain to CEO’s that you’re waiting for a patch and have to roll them back to an inferior version (no screen share, EDGE etc)

Oh and connecting via EDGE … If you’re running Snow Leopard  it still works with 13.1.2… Currently testing it on Lion, I’ve had 2 successes and 1 fail, so far I’m going with it still works! good news.

I know it’s life on the leading edge, but still, come on Microsoft, keep up!

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Jetstress-Field-Guide-1602d64c

According to the Exchange Team, the highlights are:

Updated for version 14.01.225.017 of Jetstress
Added Exchange Server 2003 instructions
Added more troubleshooting information
Added guidance for running Jetstress on a production Exchange Server
Included guidance for testing Raid Arrays
Included information and guidance on Background Database Maintenance
General corrections and clarity improvements

If you’re building or are about to build an Exchange setup, it’ worth a good read. Use it.

I guess the start for me was Sun buying Storagetek, that was back in 2005, but I mark it as one of the very early indicators of change. However after that, things appeared settled, but as a Storagetek customer, there was a shift from what felt like a more intimate organisation in Storagetek, to a very rigid feeling environment within Sun. The irony of that was even further bureaucracy and rigidity was to come in 2009 when Oracle purchased Sun.
I guess I was pretty close to both these acquisitions as I was a Storagetek customer throughout. As a customer I felt the changes quite severely. When using Storagetek for support, I felt like I could reach into the heart of the organisation to get advice or help, with Sun, those portals closed, things became very regimented, almost certainly better for a company with scale, but as a customer it was sometimes frustrating.

With Dell continuing to resell EMC, they didn’t have that storage piece they could call their own. Dell had long since been in the server space, if you didn’t buy HP/Compaq, you bought Dell tin. They went shopping and Dell bought Equallogic.
This of course soured their relationship with EMC for a while, but it seemed to more or less heal. My thoughts are here on that. Equallogic was a move away from the traditional frame based FC type SAN, with it’s iSCSI technology. It was an expensive purchase, (to put it mildly) the largest ever cash purchase of a private venture backed technology company! That said they’ve made it work for them, a very established and profitable product line now.

HP, not to be outdone, realising the changing and growing storage space, go out and acquire Lefthand Networks, who are pretty much an Equallogic competitor. Interesting in that it’s a like for like purchase, and really only touching the Enterprise level market. Lefthand a heavy iSCSI pioneer.

Oracle purchasing Sun posed many questions, with a lot of speculation that they would drop the storage, they only purchased MySQL. At the time I maintained the storage piece had value as Oracle DB turn key solutions, and low and behold that’s exactly what they’re offering now, tuned storage to create a harmony between software and hardware.

Dell, had hoped to sew up their Entry/Mid/Enterprise solution with the Equallogic and clearly with designs on 3Par products in mind went shopping and made a very interesting purchase by purchasing a storage technology company called Ocarina. They’re a dedupe/storage optimisation technology. This signalled their intention to invest further in their storage offering and continue to innovate.

In the same month IBM announced the acquisition of Storwize a data compression specialist. One can only assume they have the intention of offering it as part of their product suite.

Along comes HP, predominantly a server, printer and desktop tin vendor, they had the EVA storage solution,  it had issues and was becoming a bit of a dinosaur in a rapidly changing storage technology market. The LeftHand acquisition had put them in a good place, and for a while were the all round vendor. If you went to HP, it was pretty much a 1 stop shop. However the EVA was ageing, Lefthand wasn’t making inroads into the heavy enterprise user markets, they lacked mid to enterprise punch, a storage piece that would move them on to next generation technology. A bidding war ensued between Dell and HP for the independent 3Par. 3Par had great technology, an excellent reputation and was perceived as a fantastic purchase by both HP and Dell. HP won out. Some say they paid way over the odds, probably, but they were ahead in the race!
Ironically I don’t feel HP are pushing the 3Par sales very hard, I suspect it’s because it just doesn’t integrate into their Storageworks management platform, and that’s a piece of development that is ongoing. Just take a walk around their website, it’s all Lefthand P-series and EVA, 3Par seems to exist as a separate entity. Try and engage HP about 3Par products, you’ll see what I mean.

Step into 2011 and events occur at pace.

Dell expand their empire again. While Equallogic is a great product, it sits pretty much in the entry to mid level space, whereas they were filling Enterprise heavy orders with the EMC offerings. To take on that market themselves they needed that heavy hitter, they lost 3Par, so they went to their closest rival Compellent. The recession had meant that R&D for the smaller storage houses was slightly under funded, and of course made them ripe for purchase. Compellent has fantastic technology, a well respected support operation and has potential for scale and improvements. Compellent also makes a nice model for the Ocarina innovation. Dedupe in-line anyone?

Then the pace steps up!
Western Digital announces the acquisition of Hitachi disk arm. This is a very interesting purchase on many levels, clearly WD are making a play here to up the ante on Seagate, their closest rival. Hitachi parting with the disk arm is curious, they’re a storage array vendor themselves and part of their sales pitch is that they make the array end to end.. well, not anymore! Odd. That puts question marks over Hitachi HDS, are they ripe for acquisition?

Confused by that, NetApp announces their acquisition of the the LSI storage arm, Engenio. This is HUGE news. Underneath a plethora of arrays, sits LSI tech. Oracle’s 6000 series, IBM DS and FastT to me are the big fish. NetApp and Oracle compete for the same business in that market, Oracle aren’t going to want to buy from NetApp – NetApp aren’t going to want to sell to Oracle or indeed IBM, they want that business for themselves! The PR on this is that all is well, OEM relationships are safe… yeah, ok. This is business and big money. At present I can only see the end of the line for those big ticket OEM ranges. This one change puts huge question marks over further investment in those technologies, and without committed re-assurance from all parties, to my mind it’s time for change!

Next thing we know Seagate upsize to catch WD, and acquire Samsungs disk arm!

To emphasise the pace at which events occur, I’ve put together this timeline.

This isn’t exhaustive by any means, little twists and turns have come and gone, but for me these were the ones that had knock forward effect and therefor the most impact.

What next?! Rumour and prediction collide…

Cisco buy NetApp: Well, Cisco are desperate to get a slice of the storage/server market, they’re largely regarded as a 1 trick pony, king of networking. They do an AWFUL lot of collaboration with NetApp… feels like only a matter of time.

Oracle dump Hitachi and LSI/Engenio: they aren’t going to want to buy from the competition, they either buy them or drop them.

Oracle buy NetApp: They have a choice to make, dig deep and buy NetApp, which makes a lot of sense on many levels, but would be costly.

IBM buy NetApp: Similar reasons for Oracle to buy them, get back control or lose a chunk of their range

IBM buy EMC: This would also make sense for IBM, EMC has the enterprise (banking) marketplace very well sewn up and IBM has that sort of support operation to match.

Sometimes you HAVE to invest, and if you take the hard line that it’s strategic or an upgrade with an existing vendor relationship, you can’t go far wrong. Otherwise, it’s becoming a small storage vendor list, my advice, watch now, buy much later.

One very decent document I read was the upgrade guide. It’s pretty simple to read doc and contains good information about the upgrade process.

Sun Storage 6000 Series Array Firmware Upgrade Guide

To that end, it’s not exactly obvious, since the move away from Sunsolve, how to find the software in the MOS portal. To locate the 6xxx series software for the firmware upgrade process, I’ve put together this ‘where is it’ step by step.

1. Login to My Oracle Support at https://support.oracle.com/.
2. Along the top of the window that opens as your first page, click on the ‘Patches & Updates’ tab.
3. In the Patch Search pane, click on “Product or Family(Advanced Search).”
4. Tick or check the box for “Include all products in a family.”
5. In the Product field, clock the drop down and select “Sun StorageTek 6000 Series Software”
6. In the Release field, select “Sun StorageTek 6000 Series software 1.0″. It should already be selected, but just check.
7. Select the platform to install the tool and click search OR as i wanted to see all I just clicked Search.

8. This will take you to a new window with your search results. -Patch 10265930: “Sun StorageTek 6000 Series Array Firmware Upgrade Utility”
9. Download the zip file and extract the executables.

Once you have the file extracted and installed, we proceed to the firmware updates themselves.

The main thing I was after was the addition of Exchange server side rule manipulation. I’ve had a few questions about this from fellow members of staff, they adopted Outlook for Mac to replace Entourage or Mail.App etc and have had to keep a Windows Outlook session on hand to manipulate rules.

I went straight to the rules section, and got this:

Looks like I’ll jhave to press on with that Exchange 2010 upgrade! 1 step forward, 2 back.

Another addition is the ability to resend a mail, so far it was a faff, having to either forward/reply your mail and edit the content and subject line accordingly to make it look like a fresh mail. The ‘Resend’ option is now available on the Message menu and the right-click context menu.

For more detail on what fixes are in the service pack, look here. To download the file, it’s here

I’ve not paid too much attention to what is updated in Word, Powerpoint and Excel, I’m a pretty basic user of them all, so long as spell check and SUM work, I’m pretty covered .

We’re busy embarking on a Cisco Unity Connection install, to replace our old Unity 4.X installation. We’ve made a few test builds, but that’s largely been to get comfortable with the install process. We wanted to see some of the technology in action, hear some of the marketing and also get an informed demonstration.

Unity Connection: Features like Visual Voicemail and its ability to store voicemail ‘offbox’ in Exchange are what have attracted us. It’s an interesting way to achieve Unified Messaging without incurring the expensive Microsoft licencing costs. I like that unlike Unity, Unity Connection is now a linux appliance, it’s AD integration isn’t some masked Exchange 2003 installation. The only aspect I am currently not impressed by is the personal contacts feature, it’s a manual upload of contacts, with limited fields. It’s not dynamic at all, not linked to Exchange, it’s a one time import via a web portal.

Jabber: Cisco have started to combine open standards based XMPP technology obtained through the Jabber acquisition. This is being integrated into the WebEx and CUPS and CUPC products. There are ‘Cisco Jabber’ applications available for the Android and Apple platforms, and lots of work in progress to bring in more features towards the end of the year. Blackberry solutions require MVS which is essentially some glue to get it to work under the RIM framework. It creates a SIP trunk into CM, to enable you to use your mobile to make calls via CM trunks.

Cisco Quad: A very interesting product, I’m sure there are many ways to describe it and frame what it is, but it’s essentially a fully fledged ‘corporate-facebook-intranet-in-a-box’ That somewhat undersells it, a recent piece of work has seen our company develop its own intranet with social collaboration in mind, this has met with mediocre success. The Quad product would have pretty much full-filled all the technical needs for us in a turn-key solution. I’m not saying it’s all things to all men, but I was suitable impressed. As a social collaboration suite, it tops my interested list. There are Android, iPad and iPhone applications available for Quad.

Cisco CUPS: I’ve known about CUPS for ages, but it’s always been this monstrously huge product, that was a sledge hammer to crack a nut. It always felt expensive and cumbersome. I’ve no doubt it’s still quite a challenging install, but it’s mediation/federation offering to lash together CUCM and OCS/Lync that mean I will definitely be looking it over again now. The CUPC client is also much improved and is very polished. It has become a very polished and attractive product. The product was re-written with the Jabber technology and is now open standards based. Federation will be achieved using XMPP. Version 8.5.

Show and Share: I’d describe it as corporate YouTube. It enables users to share and collaborate with video/media rich content, tagging and making video content searchable. You can record a piece via a video enabled device and with 1 click publish it as online content. Also known as Cisco Digital Media Manager.

Video Conferencing (Telepresence): Cisco has done a lot of work integrating the Tandberg end points into their product range. I was impressed with the speed that this integration seems to have happened.

There was once an LCS 2005 client patch, which then wouldn’t allow connections to the server, imagine the red face explaining that one to the boss, and the fix took a while to come out!

Very recently there was this:

The bad: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/29/potential-for-database-corruption-as-a-result-of-installing-exchange-2007-sp3-ru3.aspx

The sorry: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/30/exchange-2007-2010-rollup-3-status-update.aspx

The fix: http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/31/announcing-the-re-release-of-exchange-2007-service-pack-3-update-rollup-3-v2.aspx

I’m NOT having a pop at the Exchange Dev boys and girls, far from it, they deserve kudos for holding up their hands and sorting out the problem. All credit to them for their approach and honesty.

So….. why do I stay behind the service pack bleeding edge….

There were 2 presenters, a guy from ICS, Robert Thorpe (who was a dead ringer for Smithy from Gavin and Stacey imho) and a Technical Specialist from Microsoft, Daryl Gwyn.

It was a morning only event, roughly broken into 2 sessions.

I’ve decided to offer up what I took as the points of interest:

Office 365 headlines:

• Online service is very WAN speed dependent and also Internet connectivity.
• Office 365 for EMEA is Dublin based with failover to Holland. Dedicated options are available for sensitive service organisations.
• No backup data retention options- if you want to recover data from previous months, you can’t. Microsoft only supports a 30 day recycle bin and 14 day DR backup to tape- Full backups every 12 hours and stored for 14 days.
• Geo redundancy is less about backup and restore and more just failover.
• Both Presenters were anxious to push the security aspect right down to the physical level, as in biometrics, 2 tier entry, multiple perimeter etc.
• Wan acceleration isn’t supported to/from the data centre – Also no plans to offer it.
• A few folk asked performance related questions about bandwidth and contention ratios. All surrounds just how good your Internet connection is, latency/bandwidth etc. Lots of people saying its (BPOS) rubbish when contention is high, and it is useless on dsl etc. There are no Microsoft collaborations with any Telco to improve the situation. There are no plans.
• The archive repository cannot be cached to outlook ost; it’s purely for online or connected to the server – though online mode in outlook isn’t recommended.
• Exchange online has a mobile device limitation of 5 devices -though there was no clear clarification of what was considered a mobile device (presume that anything that uses activesync will hit the count)
• Active directory upgrades required for the more detailed integration.
• Costs/pricing – various price E-plans are Enterprise and K-plans are Kiosk (factory floor folk) However there are more options for pure service based like exchange online etc. This is called the standalone pricing.
• Plain exchange online has 2plans one with voicemail one with out. Without is $5 with is $10. Lync is $2 with an extra plan, which would include virtual meetings etc. (live meeting) that’s $6.50.
• Payment options are weird, there is no direct debit option, only standing order – more pricing options for yearly and 3 yearly.
• BPOS single sign on client has gone.
• Once you buy into the platform, it means if they upgrade to the next version of the online service like ‘office366’ you will have a 12 month period once updates are announced -otherwise you WILL be migrated and older browser support for example will die- Big issue for people tied into older browsers for legacy systems!
• Small business server licensing includes all the stuff in plan 2 for share point licensing.
• Public beta is available circa April time.
• Office365 service descriptions currently in beta, but is public ally available. Office365advantage.com has these.

Office Professional Suite Online:

• It’s based on the Office Professional stack – Outlook includes Business Content Manager.
• All office 365 software is downloaded via portal, still requires install process like any other software. In essence it’s Office with an alternate licensing arrangement.
• Local PC runs an OSA office subscription agent. You get up to 5 activations, so you get to install it at home or wherever (users can do this from their portal!) then OSA goes dormant for 30 days then checks licensing, if it fails it warns for 30 days then for another 30 days with reduced functionality, then on next check-in it’s deactivated.
• All offered on a per user/ per month basis
• No IE6 support.

Exchange Online

• Outlook 2003 will no longer work.
• Limits to 500 recipients/day ; 30messages/minute.
• No catch-all mailboxes.
• Exchange online now offers advanced routing for mail, whereas BPOS never offered
• Online for enterprise plan offers 25gb mailbox.
• Online cals also provide on-premise cal, on-premise cal is only for that, not online.
• Hosted BES service isn’t available. BES has limitations mainly subnet issues, I.e. it needs to be on be same subnet as exchange, not possible in the cloud. Work is ongoing to integrate BES with EWS, but there are no current timescales.
• Exchange online doesn’t support AD IMS except that it will talk back to on premises AD IMS. In online there is no AD IMS.
• Exchange online has no advanced filtering options except if you also have on premises then it can direct it back to an internal HT before sending. So you can’t do journaling for instance in online.
• Office 365 gives you licensing to have a gateway Exchange 2010 server to let you serve free busy info to your 2007 users. This means you have host a 2010 on-premises server until you have no more 2007 users.
• Questions were asked about the use of the ‘GoodSync’ product (which is used on mainly iPhones/iPads for fencing off work email from personal in a secure manner) Nobody presenting knew about it. It’s a product that Vodafone are offering with their data packages for stuff like iPhones and iPads.
• You also can’t use something like Websense, Messagelabs or Postini, without sending the mail back to a routing box YOU host to then forward onto the 3^rd party.

SharePoint Online

• Sharepoint online – sandbox options, intranet and extranet sites offered.
• Share point 2010 allows document sharing within the document to allow bits and pieces of the document to be locked. It’s an add-on to make check in and check out more granular.
• SharePoint online licensing seems a bit mad, if you share a document outside your organisation via the extranet and they use the web app to edit text on your ppt say (a ppt that you shared with them via the extranet) then that is breaking then law as they have no licence. It needs more thought. It also generates billing to you based on who does access on a per user per month basis. It’s haphazard imho.
• Share point FIS is For Internet Sites. Which covers anon access, currently not on roadmap but is destined for 12 months.
• There are 3 options for identity federation
  • Local I’d with Microsoft ids (So separate from your AD)
  • Dirsync (A pull from your in-house AD)
  • Federation + dirsync. ADFS 2.0
• There is No federation on XP home or media centre (as it can’t be added to a domain) This limits what home users have as OS. -Potential issues requiring further investment.
• High availability of your own dmz/firewall/Connectivity is stressed all the time. If your have poor WAN links and only small Internet connectivity then don’t bother.
• Insights- Visio services which can tie icons or drawings back to actual data.

Lync Online:

• Lync online has no PSTN breakout in the cloud but is expected late 2011, once they work out how to bill it probably!
• Lync online offers no PBX integration and there are no plans.

So far, I’ve found these links useful:

1. The Office 365 Beta Service Descriptions
2. The IPD document. It’s still aimed at BPOS really, and needs a 365 update, but if you’re having the cloud/on premises debate, it helps cement a few things. All the documentation is here.
3. Join the IPD Beta program to get a copy of the Beta IPD documents.