Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit 1st Edition

I found this book to be an excellent resource for Office Communication Server 2007 R2. The tools and utilities on the included CD has been helpful as well in helping me support the OCS product in the workplace.

Of several other learning and informational references for OCS,this had to be the easiest read, best for recall and retaining information. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to find an all-in-one reference that spells it out.

This book tells you nothing but theory. If you actually want to install, deploy, and manage an OCS R2 installation, look elsehwere. Even more insulting, this book *doesn't even mention "upgrade"*. If you have an OCS 2007 R1 install and want to upgrade to R2, you'll end up like me... up the creek building your own boat and carving your own paddle, because Microsoft has ZERO documentation on it, and honestly, it can't be done anyways. I spent 8+ hours with their TOP OCS support person trying to do this, and it was an epic fail.

The resource kit for R2 is very similar to the R1 version - it is a very technical reference on the servers, roles, services, ports and communications mechanisms to the latest version of OCS. In that, it is written for those with on-hand experience with Microsoft server OS deployments such as Server 2003 and Server 2008. This book is not a book for beginners on OCS. In my opionion, there isn't a good written published reference for beginners - stick with the Microsoft white papers and TechNet articles. If your job is to design, architect OCS R2, this book is very valuable and will provide the process and procedures for completing your design. Deployment tasks are treated a little more lightly; while they are covered, the specific task-by-task details are not provided. That, again, is left to the white papers Microsoft has written well on the subject. As far as migration from OCS R1 to R2, the pages covered are from 659 to 662. Only a few pages - but the process to migrate is depicted in the pages. Migration from LCS or OCS R1 is a coexistence process as you will likely deploy OCS R2 on net-new hardware along side the existing legacy product. This allows easy migration by simply associating the legacy SIP-enabled users to the new system.This reference is well worth the purchase price. This, along with the Microsoft-provided technical references will steer you in the right direction for OCS R2.

First, I want to congratulate and say "Bravo" to the team of writers lead by Rui Maximo. As a trainer/writer/author and consultant on the subject of "Microsoft Unified Communications" I cannot leave without this book on my desk and others on similar subject like Exchange 2010. As an author, I can imagine the arduous process that the team went through to collect all the technical reference information and the nuggets of wisdom by actual implementers of this technology.This book is a resource kit -a very technical reference book on the planning, architecture, deployment, monitoring, managing and trouble-shooting your OCS R2 environment. OCS R2 architecture is similar to Exchange Server 2007/2010 architecture -each server role is a component that fits with other server roles to deliver a complete UC solution. But the great part about this architecture is that you don't have to deploy every server role -for example -archiving server or monitoring server role only needs to be deployed if you need that functionality. This book goes very deep -I would say 300-400 technical level in explaining the function of each server role and how it fits into the architecture and what phase you should deploy it in and how. Very thourough in each aspect and then once deployed, how to manage and monitor its performance and trouble-shoot etc.Any architect/designers/implementers of UC platform -including those that want to integrate with various PBXs and non-microsoft technologies- would find this an extremely valuable resource.I would highly recommend this book for those types of people mentioned above -technical people to use as a reference -once you get the gist of the architecture that you should build, it will help you plan for it and then phase by phase build it. To actually configure each server role and its specific features/functions that you want to deploy, then refer to MS OCS R2 deployment guides -there is one for each role, like Edge Server deployment guide -very specific step by step guide.

I'm the project manager for this book, so perhaps I'm a bit biased. :-) However, it is basically unheard of for a technical book of this breadth and depth, with 22 authors, to win this coveted national award. We are very proud of the team that worked so hard, with so much dedication and passion, to make this happen.In this book you are going to find deep,under-the hood technical information written by subject matter experts who develop, support, deploy, and troubleshoot Communications Server. No one is closer to the product than these authors. They literally wrote this book as the product was being developed.The ResKit team is now hard at work on version 3 of Communications Server Resource Kit, this time with 35 cross-team authors, and hope you will check out our progress on our new blog, DrRez, at [...]. You can also follow us on Twitter (@DrRez) at [...].Your ideas and feedback are always welcome and appreciated.

The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit is a must-have for anyone working with Office Communications Server 2007 R2. A glance at the table of contents takes you to award-winning documentation, complete with descriptive and important graphics, a cohesive style, and the distinct sense that the authors are talking to you. This book has a crisp style--easy to read and understand. It's all about providing tools and solutions. This book won't disappoint you if you're looking to enhance your company's Office Communications Server 2007 R2 experience. And who isn't?

This book is well written and goes into how OCS R2 works.It isn't aimed at first time OCS users but once you have experimented with OCS or LCS it explains a lot.It has a good example planning guide.It doesn't really cover group chat which is a shame.It touches lightly upon exchange UM working with OCS.