leedesmond’s blog

With a new set of dedicated administration tools shipped with OCS 2007 R2, you have to manually install them using the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Deployment Wizard. Bear in mind that Active Directory Users & Computers is not automatically extended for R2 management. This may come as a surprise compare to OCS 2007 where you can start administering users on the front-end server running Windows Server 2003 with the adminpak installed.

To deploy the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Administrative Tools, the supported platforms are Windows Server 2003 with SP2 (x86, x64), Windows Server 2008 (x86, x64), Vista Business or Enterprise with SP1 (x86, x64). Except for Windows Server 2003, you must install the linked updates beforehand for the latter operating systems. Although R2 is available in a 64-bit edition only, the administration tools are shipped in both x86 and x64 versions.

The administration tools essentially come in 4 flavors and are designed for specific usage situations:
- OCS 2007 R2 MMC
- OCS 2007 R2 management components for Active Directory Users and Computers
- OCS 2007 R2 snap-in extension for the Computer Management console
- LCSCmd.exe

Microsoft does not support the installation of OCS R2 administrative tools and those from OCS 2007 on the same box. Additionally, they can only be used to manage the respective OCS server versions, are not upward or backward compatible and cannot be mixed i.e. R2 administrative tools for R2 pools only.

Side note:
If you are adventurous, PowerShell scripting, Windows Management Instrumentation Tester (WBEMTest) or the WMI Administrative Tools can be used to modify WMI settings. No additional install is needed as WMI is part of Windows Server 2003/2008.

Technorati tags: LCS/OCS, OCS 2007 R2

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