How to monitor and log, centrally, OCS 2007 R2 desktop sharing logs

First, install an OCS 2007 R2 monitoring server, on a seperate server from the OCS pool.  Once that is setup using the MS directions in the link at the beginning of this post.  Create a new SQL View on the LcsCDR database with the following code below.

USE [LcsCDR]

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
ALTER VIEW [dbo].[UserMedia]
AS
SELECT     SD.SessionIdTime, SD.SessionIdSeq, SD.InviteTime, SD.ResponseTime, SD.SessionEndTime, SD.ResponseCode, ISNULL(SD.User1Id, 0) AS User1Id,
                      ISNULL(SD.User2Id, 0) AS User2Id, ISNULL(SD.TargetUserId, 0) AS TargetUserId, ISNULL(SD.SessionStartedById, 0) AS SessionStartedById,
                      ISNULL(SD.OnBehalfOfId, 0) AS OnBehalfOfId, ISNULL(SD.ReferredById, 0) AS ReferredById, ISNULL(U1.UserUri, ”) AS User1Uri, ISNULL(U2.UserUri,
                      ”) AS User2Uri, ISNULL(UT.UserUri, ”) AS TargetUserUri, ISNULL(US.UserUri, ”) AS SessionStartedByUri, ISNULL(UB.UserUri, ”) AS OnBehalfOfUri,
                      ISNULL(UR.UserUri, ”) AS ReferredByUri, dbo.MediaList.Media
FROM         dbo.SessionDetails AS SD INNER JOIN
                      dbo.Media ON SD.SessionIdTime = dbo.Media.SessionIdTime AND SD.SessionIdSeq = dbo.Media.SessionIdSeq INNER JOIN
                      dbo.MediaList ON dbo.Media.MediaId = dbo.MediaList.MediaId LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.Users AS U1 ON U1.UserId = SD.User1Id LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.Users AS U2 ON U2.UserId = SD.User2Id LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.Users AS UT ON UT.UserId = SD.TargetUserId LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.Users AS US ON US.UserId = SD.SessionStartedById LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.Users AS UB ON UB.UserId = SD.OnBehalfOfId LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      dbo.Users AS UR ON UR.UserId = SD.ReferredById

PowerShell BING Site

Bing has released a web interface to all the Powershell cmdlets, very cool, searchable and examples on how to use each cmdlet.

http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?g=powershell_cmdlets&FORM=SGEWEB&qpvt=powershell#r=53

Great OCS 2007 R2 lab setup guide

Go here for an excellent write up with screenshots on deploying OCS 2007 R2 into a hyper-v lab environment.

http://tinyurl.com/7yf9fy

I got OCS up and running into a production enviornment and love it, next up is connecting to the P BX.

Follow us on Twitter now.

Yup, jumped on the twitter thing.  Good way to post and get information.  Stop by and follow.

Virtualization EcoShell

Virtualization EcoShell

For those of you who manage a VMware environment this FREE tool is a must. It’s all written on top of Microsoft’s PowerShell and is eventually going to be built right into PowerGUI. Very very cool.

Download here

New PowerShell Help Reader

Get the latest Quest AD snappins for PowerShell

PowerShell 2.0 CTP 3 still doesn’t have native Active Directory cmdlets.  You can still get into AD and do stuff, but have to use the native ADSI calls.  The FREE Quest AD tools just adds a snapin of cmdlets that you can use to do AD stuff.  Very easy to build into your scripts for automation.  Good stuff for you PowerShell users.  If you want to add the snapin to the native PS install, follow my how to here.

Download the Quest tool here.

AD Quest Cmdlets

Add-QADGroupMember
Add-QADMemberOf
Add-QADPasswordSettingsObjectAppliesTo
Add-QADPermission
Approve-QARSApprovalTask
Connect-QADService
Convert-QADAttributeValue
Deprovision-QADUser
Disable-QADUser
Disconnect-QADService
Enable-QADUser
Get-QADComputer
Get-QADGroup
Get-QADGroupMember
Get-QADMemberOf
Get-QADObject
Get-QADObjectSecurity
Get-QADPasswordSettingsObject
Get-QADPasswordSettingsObjectAppliesTo
Get-QADPermission
Get-QADPSSnapinSettings
Get-QADRootDSE
Get-QADUser
Get-QARSAccessTemplate
Get-QARSAccessTemplateLink
Get-QARSApprovalTask
Get-QARSOperation
Move-QADObject
New-QADGroup
New-QADObject
New-QADPasswordSettingsObject
New-QADUser
New-QARSAccessTemplateLink
Reject-QARSApprovalTask
Remove-QADGroupMember
Remove-QADMemberOf
Remove-QADObject
Remove-QADPasswordSettingsObjectAppliesTo
Remove-QADPermission
Remove-QARSAccessTemplateLink
Rename-QADObject
Restore-QADDeletedObject
Set-QADGroup
Set-QADObject
Set-QADObjectSecurity
Set-QADPSSnapinSettings
Set-QADUser
Set-QARSAccessTemplateLink
Unlock-QADUser

FYI: Single-leg network ISA 2006

In order to run the ISA 2006 desktop firewall client you need to configure your ISA Proxy to be a dual-legged network.  Fun fun proxy stuff.

Step By Step: Building a Windows Cluster in VMware Workstation 6.5

I needed to do some testing with Exchange 2003 using a Front-End / Back-End setup.  I found this step-by-step article with screenshots on how to setup the Windows clustering part.  Check it out, it works great.  I added some shared storage and was able to successfully fail one node over to the other and vice versa.  Cool stuff.

http://mylab4clustering.blog.co.in

How To Build an ISA 2004/2006 VMware Lab Environment

So I needed to build an ISA lab to test the firewall client so that I can start controlling outbound FTP through AD groups.  Rather than doing this in PROD I decided to build this in a VMware Workstation environment.  This link below is a great resource and did the job.

Click here.

Free: MDT 2008 / SCCM 2007 OS Deployment Guide

This is a free CD with video’s on OS deployment.  Free only until May 16th.

http://www.deploymentcd.com/

Some of the items covered are.

- Installing the deployment server for MDT 2008 Lite Touch
- Installing the deployment server for SCCM 2007 (Zero Touch)
- Creating universal reference images using Lite Touch
- Creating universal reference images using SCCM 2007
- Deploying images using Lite Touch
- Deploying images using SCCM 2007
- Dynamic Settings, using the deployment database
- Assigning applications
- Driver handling and sysprep internals
- Troubleshooting
- Deployment Tips and tricks

DFS Slowness, caused by VMware Workstation…huh???

It’s been a while since I posted anything here, sorry ’bout that.   I thought I would submit this quick post as it’s been driving me crazy for sometime now.  If you are running a Windows DFS environment and all seems well except on a few machines, check to see if you have VMware Workstation 6.x installed.  Both my test machines do have this installed which causes long hanging issues when browsing DFS shares.  Using the physical node name to connect to the shares works fine.

After removing VM Workstation all was well again, very odd.  My guess is that because VM is running in the background as a service with the virtual networks that is installed causes it to be confused with Microsoft’s SMB.   I ended up creating an entire DFS test environment using production Active Directory servers, lot of time for something so small.  Oh well……..I’m okay that it’s just me and some test machines.   Anyone else see or hear of this?

FREE: Ubuntu Pocket Guide

http://www.ubuntupocketguide.com/download.html

BlackBerry: Free Voice Control of your device

Have you ever wanted to control your BlackBerry device by talking to it. Let’s say you want to add a new task. All you have to do is say “New Task” get milk. After that you will now have a new task labeled get milk. Very cool and FREE.

http://www.vlingo.com/index.jsp

Wikipedia.com now mobile ready

http://mobile.wikipedia.com

Tried this out on my BlackBerry and it looks very clean.

Be on the lookout for the new GMail themes

NEW – PowerShell: CBT Nuggets

Internet TV FREE utility, much like RSS and Tivo

I just discovered this FREE tool the other day.  It’s kinda like Tivo and a RSS reader for Internet video.  There’s some great techie stuff out there.   Take a look, there’s over 4000 channel’s.

Download
http://www.getmiro.com/

Here’s a great Miro Channel
https://miroguide.com/channels/4832

5 Free PowerShell Tools

I saw this online a little while ago, thought I would share. 

http://www.networkworld.com/community/five-free-powershell-tools

How to add Quest AD tools to your native PowerShell

Okay so I got the AD cmdlets working in the standard install of Powershell.  I didn’t want to use the Quest PowerShell command line interface, that’s just me though.  Also, it’ll be easier to run scheduled scripts through the native anyway.

The first thing you need to do is install Windows PowerShell.  I’m using the new CTP 2.0 because of it’s remote capabilities and it comes with a nice GUI scripting interface as well which color codes everything.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=60deac2b-975b-41e6-9fa0-c2fd6aa6bc89&displaylang=en

You need to install .NET 2.0 and I think .NET 3.0 as well.  I have both so it didn’t really matter.  You also need to install WS-Management which you can get here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=845289CA-16CC-4C73-8934-DD46B5ED1D33&displaylang=en

Now download and install the AD Quest tools, these are FREE by the way.  This also gives you another PowerShell command line window.  Too many command line windows hence the reason for this blog post.

http://www.quest.com/powershell/activeroles-server.aspx

Now it’s time to create your PowerShell profiles.  The first thing you want to do is open up the PowerShell command line editor and run the following

test-path $profile

This will tell you if you have a personal PowerShell profile.  A profile runs when you launch PowerShell so you can customize.

So, lets’ create one, run this PowerShell line

new-item -path $profile -itemtype file -force

Now type

notepad $profile

This will open your personal PowerShell launch profile.  This is where you can add the Quest AD tools to open with your native PowerShell.  Add the following to the .ps1 file and save.

add-pssnapin quest.activeroles.admanagement

Now close out of PowerShell and open again, you should now have the Quest AD snap-ins in  your PowerShell.  To test, run

get-pssnapins

Now if you really want to get fancy and allow all your PowerShell tools to load these snappins you can remove the add-psssnapin from your profile above and add it to the systems profile.  To do this open up PowerShell and run this line.

new-item -path $env:windir\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\profile.ps1 -itemtype file -force

This will create a system profile, this will launch for anyone and for any interface on that system.  Now edit the newly created .ps1 file in the SYS32 location above with

 add-pssnapin quest.activeroles.admanagement

You’re now good to go.  These AD Quest tools are great, no more long WMI scripts with these.  Enjoy!

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