Deploying Office 365 Desktop Updates

21st of December, 2011 / / No Comments

When migrating to Office 365 it is necessary to distribute updates to your client machines which will facilitate authentication with the Office 365 service along with adding features and support for the Office 365 services into the Office suite on your desktop.

There are a couple of ways these updates can be distributed to the client machines: –

Centralised Deployment

Many businesses will have an SOE and a managed environment in which the most effective method of distribution will be using a patch management system such as Microsoft System Centre Configuration Manager.… [Keep reading] “Deploying Office 365 Desktop Updates”

Lync 2010 Mobility – Do I need lyncdiscoverinternal?

12th of December, 2011 / / 14 Comments

Lync Server 2010 Mobility supports an internal and an external automatic discovery record. As described in this post, the mobile client signs-in by performing a DNS query for lyncdiscoverinternal.<your sip domain>. If this record is not present (does not resolve), the client attempts lyncdiscover.<your sip domain>. This design approach aligns to the Lync 2010 client software for Windows. First an attempt for the SRV record _sipinternaltls._tcp.<your sip domain>, followed by _sipinternal.tcp, followed by _sip._tls, then the A record fallbacks.… [Keep reading] “Lync 2010 Mobility – Do I need lyncdiscoverinternal?”

Lync 2010 Mobility Sign-in Internals

12th of December, 2011 / / 5 Comments

The best way to understand the internals of a product or service is to reverse engineer the process using logging and network captures. Capturing the process end-to-end helps paint a clear view as to what is going. Here is what happens when you sign-in on the Lync Mobile client for Windows Phone.

  1. Enter sign-in information and credentials into the Lync Mobile client. (hmmm, screen crack)

  2. Performs a standard DNS query for lyncdiscoverinternal.<sip domain namespace>.

    If the client is external, this DNS resolution will fail and the client will drop to the next discovery record

  3. Performs a standard DNS query for lyncdiscover.<sip
… [Keep reading] “Lync 2010 Mobility Sign-in Internals”

Lync 2010 Mobility Configuration Overview

12th of December, 2011 / / 3 Comments

Lync mobility requires the installation of cumulative update 4 across your Lync server infrastructure. To install CU4, visit here. Once CU4 is deployed, you’re ready to configure the mobility service. You can download the Mobility deployment guide here. A high level summary is:

  1. DNS: Create an External DNS CNAME.

    Create CNAME Lyncdiscover.<your sip domain> that resolves to your external web services.

  2. Configure Ports: Configure Ports for the Mobility Service

    Set-CsWebServer –Identity <name of pool> –McxSipPrimaryListeningPort 5086

    Set-CsWebServer –Identity <name of pool> –McxSipExternalListeningPort 5087

    Enable-CsTopology –verbose

  3. Install Components: Install the Mobility and Lync Automatic discovery services

    On each front-end and director run McsStandalone.msi

… [Keep reading] “Lync 2010 Mobility Configuration Overview”

Cloud Revolution – The Blind Entrepreneur

6th of December, 2011 / / 1 Comment

[Following from Cloud Revolution]

Profitable since the first quarter, 375 million page views per month, $4 million in annual revenue, 75 employees and $30 million in venture funding. Certainly sounds like a successful business, and it is.

I Can Has Cheezburger has leveraged the initial success of that hit web site by launching hundreds of other similar but slightly different sites based on the original. Many of these sites fail to attract traffic and are shut down within weeks, but every now and then one works, like “Fail Blog” or “Totally looks like“.… [Keep reading] “Cloud Revolution – The Blind Entrepreneur”

Cloud Revolution – The Late Night Scientist

6th of December, 2011 / / 1 Comment

[Following from Cloud Revolution]

It’s late at night in January and an email just arrived that has someone very excited. A medical student has won an auction, but this is no eBay auction, it’s an Amazon EC2 instance auction. She has been preparing for this moment for over a year and will make or break her post-doctoral research paper.

She is continuing the valuable work done by her predecessors in the field of on Parkinson’s research and its relationship to dopamine levels in the brain.… [Keep reading] “Cloud Revolution – The Late Night Scientist”

Cloud Revolution – The New Cottage Industry

6th of December, 2011 / / 1 Comment

[Following from Cloud Revolution]

In a small office in the back of a house in Melbourne is a business taking on the big players in their own backyard. Running a photo library and acting as an intermediary between a carefully chosen group of photographers and a select genre of magazines and publications.

A new photo shoot has just been uploaded from Hungary to the hosting site and a notification email has been sent. The shoot is first quality controlled, categorised and submitted for key wording using one of the new “mechanical turk” cloud services that provide an electronic portal into large, on demand, pools of human labour.… [Keep reading] “Cloud Revolution – The New Cottage Industry”