Implementing OCS 2007 R2 on a new domain: Part 1

OCS 2007 R2 released this month, and I have a few implementations coming up this year, so I decided to test it out and make sure I knew what I was doing first. Hopefully it helps you as well.

First step is to prepare your active directory. This can be done using the GUI setup. There are command line options as well.

There are seven sub steps, the ones that are bold are required steps.

• Prepare Schema
  
• Verify Replication of Schema Partition
  
• Prepare Forest
  
• Verify replication of global settings and global catalog
  
• Prepare Current Domain
  
• Verify Replication in the Domain
  
• Delegate Setup and Administration
  

  
  

Obviously, I am using a fresh domain with nothing more than 2008 DC's and my domain is a 2008 forest and domain functional level, so I should not run into many issues at all in this section.

However, if you are implementing OCS R2 into a domain with many domain controllers, multiple domains, this part will be MUCH more complicated and each verification step should be carefully performed. I gloss over checking the verifications a little since they all succeed.

If you have a more complicated environment, you should read up on the documentation first.

OCS 2007: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=384793A6-D315-4217-B034-6D189EF6DF13&displaylang=en

OCS 2007 R2 does not yet appear in Technet. I will update this as soon as it is.

Step One: Preparing the Schema

To do this, you need to be a member of your Schema Administrators group and Enterprise Administrators group. Also, to do this and not back up your schema first is foolish. So launch ntbackup on your schema master and take a backup of the system state. Also, if you do NOT know your directory restore mode password, that backup is fairly useless, so please reset this password first.

Then, you can launch the OCS setup and click Active Directory Preparation, then launch the "prep schema" Depending on size of your AD, speed of your machine, etc, this one might take a bit, so go grab a coffee or something.

Step Two: Verify Replication of the Schema

This is an optional step, but I really recommend checking all of this as you go, as it's easier than proceeding and having issues later.

In your OCS 2007 R2\setup\amd64 folder, you can run the following command:

Lcscmd /forest/action:checkschemaprepstate

Opening this shows me:

If you have anything other than success, investigate, address, and repeat this step.

Step Three: Preparing the Forest

This one is quicker than last. If you finished your coffee from earlier, you might want to slow down. Once you run through this, there is a screen asking for your domain name

Step Four: Verifying Forest Replication

Lcscmd /forest/action:checkforestprepstate

….

Upon running this, if you open this file, you can see something very similar to the OCS validation reports you will see later.

More good news for me!

Step Five: Preparing the Domain

In this step, you are finally asked for your domain name and SIP URI. For my domain, I left them the default AD domain name (domain.com in this case) However, in a production environment, your AD FQDN might be foo.company.local, but you want your SIP URI to be the "public" domain name. I would have used chrislehr.com, but I have no plans to implement federation at this point, so I left it domain.com. I can still add chrislehr.com as a SIP URI after the fact for this if I want to.

Step Six: Verifying Domain replication

Lcscmd /domain /action:checkdomainprepstate

Opening this HTML file shows:

Great, so my Active Directory is now ready for an OCS 2007 R2 deployment. But first…

Step Seven: Delegate Administration

This is where in a larger environment, you could give access to a user or group to manage OCS without being a Domain Admin.

I recommend creating some groups to put users in so that you don't have to revisit this setup for IT hires.

Check out Part 2