To any who see/read this that want to know what I did to pass, I read, alot. I seriously spent a lot of time just reading the documentation that is posted on vmware.com. I also put together a lab though I didn’t use that as much as I thought I would. For me, just reading the docs and thankfully all of the blogs I keep up on I believe gave me the edge here. A lot of the test I answered based on gut feel for the products rather than hardcore knowledge.

I would also like to thank Simon Long and his great test questions. They really made me think about the product in the way VMware would test. You can find his site here:

http://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/vcp5-practice-exams/

His questions aren’t on the test but they are written like they could have been which really helped.

Best of luck to all who are trying to get their VCP 4 upgraded before the end of February.

* Enabling external users to download meeting content for your meetings.
* Enabling external users to expand distribution groups.
* Enabling remote users to download files from the Address Book service.
* Accessing the Microsoft Lync Web App client.
* Accessing the Dial-in Conferencing Settings webpage.
* Accessing the Location Information service.
* Enabling external devices to connect to Device Update web service and obtain updates.
* Enabling mobile applications to automatically discover mobility URLs from the Internet.

One thing to note here is the last one. Just a week or so ago, the Lync Mobility Service was released. The Lync Mobility Service is published via the Reverse Proxy as well as the other pieces.

Here is the Microsoft Technet article describing the Reverse Proxy in detail:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398069.aspx

In the end, the Reverse Proxy, while not dependent to make the Lync client work, is a very important piece of the architecture. Ensuring that it is working properly can really help make your users experience with Lync better.

CU4: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2493736

Mobility: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28356

Mobility Doc: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28355

We will be meeting from 4-6pm at the Microsoft Offices in the Tech Center.

While working with a client, it was made known they were using an OpenFire Jabber server for IM. Since we have Lync along with the XMPP gateway in order to communicate with GTalk users, it seemed fitting to make it work with OpenFire. That is where the fun began.

We setup our XMPP server with their info and after the clients network folks had gotten the firewalls all setup, we were able to successfully test the connection from the XMPP gateway. However, whenever we tried to actually IM each other it would always fail. On our side I just saw a Response Time Out. On the client’s side we were seeing messages like this:

Error creating secured outgoing session to remote server: domain.com(DNS lookup: xmpp.domain.com:5269)

After doing some investigation and Googling, it was determined that they were running OpenFire 3.6.4 and that we might have better success with 3.7. A quick upgrade later and we were in business. At the end of the day three things helped us:

1. Upgrade OpenFire to 3.7
2. Set OpenFire to not use TLS. This meant setting it from “Optional” to “Not Available”
3. Having the latest OCS 2007 R2 XMPP Gateway patch installed.

Hope this helps others who might be trying to setup this type of interoperability.

I unfortunately had this exemplified to me shortly there after. I received a letter in which someone expressed their feelings about a topic. They felt that I had been inconsiderate about something. They made their point but at the end of the day there is no difference. The time for a decision on the topic has come and gone. I cannot change that. Sadly, the person who wrote me has decided that in conjunction with making their point they were going to stop talking to my family and me. This person has made their point but they have made no difference. Not only that but they have willingly removed themselves from any future interaction which could have made a difference.

This leads me to this, are you making a point just to make a point? If so, what is it costing you? Would it be more beneficial to you or those around you if you made a difference instead? In order to make a difference, you might have to let your point slip by or drop it all together. This can be tough in a world where all just want to be right.

I’m not sure how this will look for me but I know I would rather make a difference. I would like to be able to look back and know that I changed something for the good than to have made my point and lost any chance to do anything more.

After many hours of trying everything I could think of, I tried the install with the machine as a stand-alone server and not a member of the domain. BAM! Everything went in smoothly. Evidently Microsoft wants you to use the TMG 2010 management tools to join the domain for some reason.

Hope this helps someone else.

Long story short, uninstalled and bam, the Pre-Call Diag tool installed just fine.

The question for today is what should you be doing first that you aren’t? Also, what are you putting off because it really isn’t a priority? Try to recognize what your priorities really are and do them.