Waveformation

I just passed this exam yesterday and I wanted to share my list of suggested study topics. As of 06/25/09, this exam is still based on OCS 2007 R1. Specifically the material in the Global Knowledge UC Voice Ignite training course, version 1.0. If you have access to the materials from this course, it will be your best bet for studying for this exam. Alternatively, I have compiled this list of topics which I feel are most important to passing this exam. The modules refer to the modules in the UCVI course.

074-924 Study Topics – Module(s)

Deployment Validation Tool – Module 15
Answering Agent Tool – Module 15
Validation Wizard – Module 15
VOIP Test Tool – Module 15
Software Update Service / SharePoint – Module 10
ConfigUpdatesServer.vbs – module 10
Exchange Autodiscover – module 10
Tanjay DHCP / DNS Requirements – module 10
DHCP Option 119 – module 10
SRV Records – module 13
Edge Ports / Certificates – Module 12, 13
Mediation Config / Certificates – Module 5 Part II
Pool Certificates / SAN Requirements – Module 13
Codecs / Bandwidth Requirements – Module 6
Exchange UM / OCS Integration – Module 17
ExchUCUtil.ps1 – Module 17 p6
OcsUMUtil.exe – Module 17 p6
Normalization – Module 7
ABS – Module 7 p 11
Certificate Auto-enrollment – Module 13 p11
Least Cost Routing – Module 7 p 16

Remember that this exam is based on UCVI version 1.0 material. Many of the questions do not have an answer that is completely correct. Choose the best answer based on the material in this course.

Normalization and dial plans was one of those topics that took me a awhile to fully understand. I think this is true for many people who are being introduced to the telephony world for the first time by attempting to implement Enterprise Voice with OCS. This article does a good job of explaining the how and why of E.164 (RFC 3966) normalization. Highly recommended read.

http://blogs.technet.com/dougl/archive/2009/06/25/phone-numbers-in-OCS.aspx

There is a brand new firmware release for Communicator Phone Edition 2007 R2 aka Tanjay. This release brings the latest version number to 6907.31.

Download the new 6907.31 firmware

For a full list of changes, see KB article KB967820.

Of the four issues fixed in this release, one adds the user’s Work number from ABS to the phone’s main screen. Two others are accessibility options for sight and hearing impaired users. The fourth is the most notable in my opinion. The tanjay will now record the actual phone number that a known contact called from in it’s call log. This enabled users to call back directly to the endpoint/device that was used to make the original call using the ‘Call’ button in the call log.

I ran across an issue deploying an OCS 2007 R2 Standard Edition Server today. Web Component validation failed and attempts to browse to the GroupExpansion or Abs virtual directories results in a HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable. Upon further investigation, the LSGroupExpAppPool application pool in IIS was disabled. The application pool would become disabled as soon as IIS received a request for any application running under the pool. When this occured, the following event was logged:

Event ID: 5021

Source: Windows Process Activation Service (WAS)

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I recently compiled a single command to install the necessary prerequisites for OCS 2007 R2 Front End on Windows Server 2008.

Servermanagercmd.exe -install web-windows-auth web-mgmt-compat web-mgmt-console web-http-logging msmq-server msmq-directory rsat-addc powershell was-process-model was-config-apis

This installs the following components:

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Microsoft has made the OCS 2007 R2 Documentation available as both an inclusive .chm file as well as individual Word .doc files.

Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 Documentation

MVP Aaron Tiensivu wrote a blog post about an issue that surfaces when installing April 2009 updates on OCS 2007 R2. If you don’t have MSMQ (Messaging Queueing) installed prior to installing KB967831, the patch installation will fail leaving you with a broken OCS environment. To mitigate this, install MSMQ prior to installing the April 2009 OCS 2007 R2 updates. Aaron provides the following information regarding installing MSMQ:

With Server 2008, you can run ServerManagerCmd -i MSMQ-Services and ServerManagerCmd -i MSMQ-Server.
With Server 2003 x64, it is a little more complex as an automation task but can be done using the details mentioned here.

Aaron Tiensivu’s Original Post

OCS MVP Elan Shudnow wrote a great article on best practice for creating the OCS Enterprise pool on the Front End or the SQL Server. Microsoft recommends creating the enterprise pool on the Backend SQL Server instead of the Front End pool. The exception to this is if the Backend SQL Server is running a different processor architecture than the OCS environment. 32-bit for R1 and 64-bit for R2. This breaks down into the following table taken from Elan Shudnow’s post:

OCS R1 with SQL 32-bit – Create Pool on SQL
OCS R1 with SQL 64-bit – Create pool on OCS FE
OCS R2 with SQL 32-bit – Create Pool on OCS FE
OCS R2 with SQL 64-bit – Create Pool on SQL

The article goes into specific details about the how and why this is recommended. Bottom line is that LCSCMD from the OCS installation media is the easiest way to create the pool from the SQL Server. This method eliminates the need to install any pre-requisites needed by the OCS setup GUI. See Creating Pools (Command Line) on Technet.

Elan Shudnow’s Original Post