11th MVP Award Rewarded

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I am actually on vacation, but as I sit here under the summer sun, toes in the pool and a cold drink within reach, I have been waiting for that email confirming that I’ve been awarded my 11th Microsoft MVP Award! As last year, I am being awarded in both the Teams and Copilot category. To say I’m humbled would be an understatement. Being part of the global Microsoft MVP community for over a decade now has been an incredible journey, filled with learning, sharing, speaking, and connecting with passionate technologists from every corner of the world. What is the Microsoft MVP Award? The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award is given to technology experts who share their knowledge and real-world expertise with communities. With fewer than 4,000 MVPs worldwide, it’s an honor to be part of such a vibrant and dedicated group. MVPs contribute through speaking engagements, writing, open-source contributions, and helping others online and offline. You can learn more about the progra...

Installing OCS 2007 R2 (Still fighting a bit)

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Once again, .NET 3.5 is a prerequisite for installing OCS 2007, and once again the installation for this failed. A tip for you might be to enable these things ahead of the installation of OCS. I do not remember having the same problem on OCS 2007 with Windows server 2003. It might be a 2008 issue as much as a R2 problem. If anyone do install this on Windows 2003, please let me know if you run into the same issues.

Now, off to the installation at hand. First of is the Back End server on which I just installed SQL.
If you are going to install everything on one box, you don't have to read much to install OCS (a basic understanding of the components involved is really helpful though). But if you are about to what I am, install an Enterprise installation with back ends, frontends and possibly balance loaders and several pools. Reading the docs is just for you! Also, make sure the right client tools are inplace, and server times are synchronized (I am using SQL 2008 on the back end, and the installation comes with 2005 client tools).

Installing BE is really just about "preparing" the environment. For those you who have not seen the wizard; This is a task of it's own. A few simple steps to complete.

Installing the FE is another matter. Again; If you are installing all on one box, there isn't too many pitfalls. But when you deploy to several servers, you need to keep your head straight when it comes to poolnames, servernames, sipdomains and certificates.... If you have a basic understanding, it should not be too hard, but still... whatch out for those pitfalls when assigning roles, names and certificates. My biggest obstacle was figuring out how to add the certificate to IIS. AS it turned out, the management tools were not installed (and are not by default).