Microsoft Lync Server 2010

Management Pack Guide

Microsoft Corporation

Published: November, 8th 2010

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Contents

Contents
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Management Pack Guide..................................................1

Copyright.....................................................................................................................2

Contents......................................................................................................................3

Contents......................................................................................................................3
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Management Pack Guide...............................................5

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Management Pack Guide..................................................5

Document Version.....................................................................................................5
Introduction to the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Management Pack...........................5
Getting the Latest Management Pack and Documentation....................................5
What's New............................................................................................................5
Central discovery...................................................................................................6
Reduced Alert Noise: ............................................................................................6
Prioritized alerts: ...................................................................................................6
Stateful alerting: ...................................................................................................7
Transient handling: ..............................................................................................7
Synthetic transactions............................................................................................7
Call reliability monitoring.......................................................................................8
Media Quality monitoring.......................................................................................8
Port monitoring......................................................................................................8
Simple URL monitoring...........................................................................................9
Supported Configurations.....................................................................................10
Getting Started.......................................................................................................11
Before You Import the Management Pack............................................................11
Deploying Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Management Pack...................................11
Pre-Requisites......................................................................................................11
Enable Agent Proxy settings in Operations Manager Console..............................12
How to Import the Lync Server 2010 Management Pack......................................13
Import Management Pack....................................................................................13
How Central Discovery works...............................................................................13
Verify Component monitoring works....................................................................14
Troubleshooting Central Discovery failures..........................................................15
Deploying Call Reliability & Media Quality Monitoring.............................................16
Prerequisite .........................................................................................................16
Deployment steps for QoE Monitoring..................................................................16
Verify Media Quality monitoring works.................................................................18
 Verify Call Reliability monitoring works................................................................19
Configure alerting thresholds for Media Quality monitoring.................................19

Deploying Synthetic transactions (STs)......................................................................23

Setting up Synthetic transaction watcher node....................................................23
Capacity and OS Requirements:...........................................................................23
Deploying synthetic transactions watcher node...................................................24
Verify that Synthetic Transactions are working....................................................28
Troubleshooting ST Watcher issues......................................................................28
Configure Port monitoring for your deployment...................................................29
Configure URL monitoring for your deployment...................................................30
How Health Rolls Up................................................................................................31
Health Rollup Diagram.........................................................................................33
Maintenance...........................................................................................................35
Pool Maintenance ................................................................................................35
Server maintenance.............................................................................................38

Configuring Notifications............................................................................................39
Create a New Management Pack for Customizations...........................................41
Optional Configuration............................................................................................42
Enabling Performance Threshold and Collection Rules.........................................42
Slow WAN Links or Large Branch Office Deployments..........................................42
Security Considerations...........................................................................................43
Low-Privilege Environments.................................................................................43
Run As Profiles.....................................................................................................43
Management Pack problems and resolutions..........................................................43
Microsoft Lync Server 2010
Management Pack Guide
Document Version
This guide was written based on the 4.0.7577.0 version of the Microsoft®
Lync™ Server 2010 communications software Management Pack.

Revision History

Release Date Changes

November, 8th 2010 Original release of this guide

Introduction to the Microsoft Lync Server

2010 Management Pack
The Lync Server 2010 Management Pack (MP) is your monitoring solution of
choice for monitoring any Lync Server 2010 deployment.

The management pack implements traditional Event Log and Performance

counter based instrumentation is utilized, as well as enabling newly available
instrumentation in Lync Server 2010, such as pair events (failure/success) for
several Key Health Indicators, as well as fully utilizing the new Synthetic
Transactions (Test-Cs* Windows PowerShell™ command-line interface
cmdlets).

Getting the Latest Management Pack and

Documentation
You can find the Lync Server 2010 Management Pack in the System Center
Operations Manager 2007 Catalog (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=82105).

What's New
The following features are new in this release of the Lync Server 2010
Management Pack, compared to previous iterations (Microsoft® Office
Communications Server 2007 and 2007 R2 Management Packs).
5
Central discovery
Discovery of roles and components that need to be monitored is
automatically completed based on a central discovery script that reads the
topology document published in Central Management Database.

Reduced Alert Noise:

This management pack features significantly improved alert to noise ratio
compared to previous versions of Lync Server 2010 management packs. This
investment is based on applying health models for each component in the
product and driving alerting based on the health model.

Prioritized alerts:
Alerts have been classified out-of-the-box into:

High Priority alerts:

These are indicative of service unavailability for multiple users.
For example, a Component failure on a single machine is NOT a
high priority alert. This is because Lync Server 2010 product has
built-in high availability features (for example, multiple Front-
end servers behind load balancers). A high-priority alert
indicates an outage as observed from a synthetic transaction.
Alerts with this priority are serious enough “to wake up
administrators at night.”

Medium Priority alerts:

These are indicative of component failures. For example,
Conferencing service not operational on a particular server.
Alerts in this category are stateful and indicate the current
status of the issue. In this example, if conferencing service has
recovered, the alert would be auto-resolved in Microsoft®
System Center Operations Manager. The expectation for these
alerts is that an administrator will look at them on the same
business day.

Other Alerts:
These are alerts from components that might affect a specific
user/ subset of users. For example, the Address Book service
could not parse the Active Directory® Domain Services (AD DS)
entry for user: testuser@contoso.com. The expectation for these

6
 alerts is that administrators will get to them when they have
time available.

Stateful alerting:
Alerts are auto-resolved when a failure condition is no longer applicable.
Component alerts (Medium priority only) are driven by Operations Manager
monitors that automatically turn back to “healthy” state when the problem is
no longer observed. (These alerts are still available in “Closed Alerts” view for
administrators to look at). The benefit for administrators is to know the
current status of a problem/alert by looking at monitor state.

Note: “Other Alerts” category of component alerts (see above) and Call
failure alerts are NOT stateful.

Transient handling:
This management pack defines monitors that turn to unhealthy state only
when there are consecutive failures. For example, a “High Priority” alert is
generated only when a synthetic transaction fails twice consecutively. (The
first failure is treated as a warning state for the monitor).

Synthetic transactions
This new feature in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 management pack provides
alerting based on end-to-end monitoring scenarios.

Synthetic transactions are Windows PowerShell cmdlets that are integrated

into Operations Manager management pack and test end-to-end user
scenarios. Once an administrator has designated a server to execute
synthetic transactions, these cmdlets are triggered periodically by the
management pack. Failures from a synthetic transaction generate a stateful
alert. Here are supported synthetic transactions for Microsoft Lync Server
2010:

No Scenario Name
1 Peer to Peer Instant Messaging
2 Peer to Peer audio call
3 Group Instant Messaging
4 Audio/Video Conference
5 Rich Presence

7
 6 Registration (User Login)
7 Dial in conferencing
8 Address book service (file download)
9 Address book web query
10 Peer to Peer PSTN Call

Call reliability monitoring

This new feature in Lync Server 2010 management pack provides
administrators with real-time alerting based on call reliability metrics.

Every call failure is reported to the Lync Server 2010 call detail recording
(CDR) database. Lync Server 2010 management pack integration queries this
database (CDR) periodically to look at call failures. When call failures are
detected, they are aggregated on “Diagnostic Codes.” Alerts are generated
when a “Diagnostic Code” exceeds a specified threshold for call failures.

Media Quality monitoring

This feature in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 management pack provides real-
time alerting based on network conditions. After every session is completed,
all Lync Server 2010 endpoints generate a “Quality report” that is delivered
to the Quality of Experience (QoE) database (Monitoring Server). The System
Center Operations Manager integration for Media quality alerts is driven out
of this data. Administrators receive alerts based on three different categories.
The first category is network locations such as calls between regions, Sites, or
subnets. The second category is servers such as A/V Conferencing Server.
The last category is call legs such as Gateway (Mediation Server Bypass),
Gateway and Mediation Server Leg, or Mediation Server and Client Endpoint
Leg.

This integration features dynamic discovery of faulty instances and

generating alerts for them. Alerts are stateful and get auto-resolved when a
problem no longer occurs.

Port monitoring
This new feature in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 management pack provides
automatic monitoring for ports that are used by Microsoft Lync Server 2010
product inside the corporate firewall. Any port that cannot be pinged results
in an alert that is auto-resolved when the port is working again.

8
Simple URL monitoring
This new feature in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 management pack provides
automatic monitoring for URLs that are used by Microsoft Lync Server 2010
for conference join scenarios. Any URL that cannot be pinged results in an
alert that is auto-resolved when that URL is working again.

9
Supported Configurations

System Center Operations Manager 2007 server support

• System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 (32-bit and 64-bit)

• Not supported: System Center Operations Manager 2007

RTM, or 2007 SP1*

* Lync Server 2010 Management Pack requires the Windows PowerShell

provider support which had been added with Operations Manager 2007 R2,
and cannot be deployed on Operations Manager 2007 RTM.

System Center Operations Manager 2007 agent server support

• System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Agent, 64-bit only

• Not supported: System Center Operations Manager 2007

Agent RTM, or 2007 SP1

• Not supported: System Center Operations Manager 2007

Agent R2 32-bit running in WoW64

Lync Server 2010 supported configurations

Configuration Support

Windows Server® operating

Yes, all editions.
system 2008 R2

Windows Server® operating system Yes, all editions, 64-bit only, SP1 and
2008 SP1 higher.

Clustered servers Not supported.

Agentless monitoring Not supported.

Yes, see Lync Server 2010

Virtual environment virtualization documentation for
details.

10
 Configuration Support

All internal Lync Server 2010 server

Domain Joined Server Roles
roles have to be domain joined.

Lync Server 2010 Edge is not required

Standalone Server Roles
to be domain joined.

All server roles in a deployment must

be monitored from the same
Topology Limitations
Operations Manager 2007 R2
Management Group.

Survivable Branch Office Appliance SBA monitoring is supported

(SBA) support (additional configuration required).

ST Watcher Node monitoring is

Synthetic Transactions (ST) Watcher
supported (additional configuration
Node
required).

Getting Started
Before You Import the Management Pack
Note: Read this section carefully, as additional steps are required to
enable full monitoring of your Lync Server 2010 deployment.

Deploying Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Management

Pack

Pre-Requisites
• Operations Manager 2007 R2 installation is already completed.

• Agent proxy enabled for all Front-end servers in Front-end

pool where Central Management Server is deployed. This is
usually the first pool in your deployment. Agent Proxy also needs to be
enabled for the Synthetic transaction watcher node machine (see
details below).

11
 • Lync Server 2010 is already installed.
• Operations Manager Agent has been deployed on all servers that
are part of the Lync Server 2010 deployment (including Edge Servers,
if Edge monitoring is desired).

Enable Agent Proxy settings in Operations Manager Console

• Make sure Agent Proxy setting is enabled for all Front End Servers in
the Pool that contains Central Management Server and also for the
server that will be used as synthetic transaction watcher node where
synthetic transactions will run from.

• To enable agent proxy, follow these steps:

1. Go to the server that is running System Center Operations

Manager. Open Operations Manager Console.

2. Navigate to Administration tab.

3. Select Agent Managed.

4. From the detail view on the right side, right-click the watcher node
agent, Click Properties and from the Properties dialog click the
Security tab.

5. Check “Allow this agent to act as proxy and discover managed

objects on other computers” check box. See Fig. 1

12
 Fig. 1 Agent properties window

How to Import the Lync Server 2010 Management

Pack
For instructions about importing a management pack, see How to Import a
Management Pack in Operations Manager 2007 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?
LinkId=142351).

After the Lync Server 2010 Management Pack is imported, it is recommended

to create a new management pack in which you store overrides and other
customizations.

Import Management Pack

• On the server that is running System Center Operations Manager
2007 R2.

• Install the MSI Lync Server 2010 Management Pack.msi.

• The file Microsoft.LS.2010.Monitoring.mp is installed to %Program

Files%\System Center Management Packs\Lync Server 2010
Management Pack ,
or %Program Files%\System Center Management Packs\Lync
Server 2010 Management Pack.

• Use the Operations Manager “Import Management Packs” to import

the MP.

• Or from command line run “MPimport.exe <path to Management

Pack>”.

How Central Discovery works

The first step after administrator imports the Lync Server 2010 management
pack is for Central Discovery to execute automatically and discover the entire
Lync Server deployment. This effectively jump starts all component
monitoring.

Central discovery script is a Windows PowerShell script that discovers all

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Roles/Components/Services to be monitored. This

13
script runs on the Operations Manager agent that is discovered as the Central
Discovery Watcher Node. The default algorithm to automatically pick a
machine as central discovery watcher node is as follows:
1. Find the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Front End pool where Central
Management Store is installed (usually the Front End Pool which
has been installed first).

2. Select all the member machines in the Front End Server role (this
could be an Enterprise Edition Consolidated pool with multiple Front
End Servers using a HLB or DNS load balancing).

3. Identify the computer which is currently the active master.

4. This machine will be used to discover all roles and components in

the topology. For more details, see Fig. 2.

The entire topology information is available in Central Management Database

and a single script in the management pack retrieves the topology data and
populates Operations Manager 2007 classes and relationships for all server
roles & components. (This is different from the Office Communications Server
2007 R2 management pack behavior where each server role was individually
discovered using registry keys on the local machine).

Important Note: Edge pool discovery is turned off by default.

To turn it on override value of DiscoverEdgeServerRole property of

LS Central Topology Discovery object to ‘True’.

Verify Component monitoring works

Verify whether component monitoring is working by looking at the built-in
views in the management pack.
Look at state view “5.Pools” (under Lync Server 2010 folder). Please see Fig
2.
If this view shows one or more instances, then central discovery/component
monitoring has started working.
Note: It may take several minutes for this view to refresh depending on the
size of the topology.

14
Fig. 2 Discovered pools State view

Troubleshooting Central Discovery failures

Here are common steps to troubleshoot central discovery failures:

Problem: No instances seen in state view “5.Pools”.

Steps:

1. Open view in folder “Topology Discovery\Discovery State view”. See

Figure #3 for details.

2. Ensure that all Front End Servers in the Front End pool that contains
Central Management Server are listed in this view.

a. If a Front End Server is missing from this view, then please

check:

i. Did the Operations Manager agent get pushed to that

server?

ii. Is this front-end server heart-beating in Operations

Manager correctly? Is this server down for maintenance or
otherwise unavailable?

3. Ensure that the server (FQDN) that will be picked by algorithm in

section “How central discovery works” shows “Lync Server Discovery
Script” column as “Healthy” see Figure #3:

15
 Fig. 3 Topology Discovery State View

If “Lync Server Discovery Script” column does not show “Healthy,” then
ensure that this machine is heart-beating without errors in System Center
Operations Manager and is not down for maintenance.

4. Central Discovery script (in the Lync Server 2010 management pack)
supports an override to the “FQDN” that will be used for central
discovery. Administrators can override this setting (we recommend
that this setting be used ONLY if the previous troubleshooting steps do
not work as expected). Please note this FQDN specified must be a
valid FQDN of a Microsoft Lync Server 2010 system (which is a server,
where product is installed).

Deploying Call Reliability & Media Quality

Monitoring
Prerequisite
• Monitoring Server role in Lync Server 2010 must be deployed for this
feature to work. For detail please refer to the Microsoft Lync Server
2010 Deployment guides.

Deployment steps for QoE Monitoring

Call reliability and media quality monitoring use the monitoring server
machine as their watcher node to monitor call reliability and media quality of

16
Microsoft Lync Server. Both of these features query the monitoring server
databases to do analysis. The queries that are executed as Network Service
account (as their “Run As” account). For these queries to run successfully,
administrator should add the monitoring server machine to
RtcUniversalReadonlyAdmins group.

Important Note: The default Discovery frequency of the discovery rule

‘Microsoft Lync Server 2010 QoE discovery’ is set to 15min (900sec). This
setting is by design since this rule performs discovery as well as threshold
checks. Validation in large production environments has been performed to
ensure a good compromise between delays in alerting (max 15min), and
performance consideration around frequent discoveries. If you are
experiencing a performance impact (increased or excessive
Operations Manager 2007 Agent load) on your Lync Server 2010
Monitoring server system, increase the frequency of this check by
overriding the “Frequency” setting of this discovery rule.

How to change the Frequency of the QoE Discovery:

As an Operation Manager Administrator:

1. Select Authoring tab.

2. Management Pack Objects -> Object Discoveries

3. Look For: LS QoE Discovery

a. Multiple results are returned, you can select any of the

Object Discoveries as they refer to the same Object
Discovery

4. Select any Object Discovery “LS QoE Discovery”

5. Right-Click -> Overrides -> Override the Object Discovery -> For all
objects of a class: LS QoE Monitoring

6. Scroll down to Frequency (Default) and mark the Check Box to

override

7. Change the Override Value to the desired value (unit is

seconds)

17
 8. Ensure that the Override is stored in the desired Override MP

9. Select OK to close

Verify Media Quality monitoring works

Verify whether media quality monitoring is working by validation alerts and
state views under Media quality monitoring folder from Microsoft Lync Server
views folder see Fig. 4.

Fig. 4 Media quality monitoring alert and state views

18
Verify Call Reliability monitoring works
Verify whether call reliability monitoring is working or not by looking call
reliability and call reliability internal alerts view from Lync Server views folder
see Fig. 5.

Fig. 5 Call reliability alerts view

Configure alerting thresholds for Media Quality

monitoring
Media Quality alerting configuration is done through configuration of the
Discovery on “Microsoft Lync Server 2010 QoE discovery”. Note: Due to
implementation specifics the configuration including setting of thresholds
must be done in the Discovery module.

Default settings are

• Warning alert threshold % (Default) : 14

• Critical alert threshold % (Default): 20

You can override these settings to customize to your deployment.

Advanced customization is possible using a number of scenarios (see details

list in Fig. 6 Available override in discovery “Microsoft Lync Server 2010 QoE
discovery).

19
For example you can overwrite the Critical alert threshold % (A/V
Conferencing Server) by setting this to a custom percentage. The default
setting is “-1” which means no override is set, and the default threshold
applies.

Another advanced customization is to exclude a specific QoE instance from

being monitored. You can specify multiple instance names to the ‘Excluded
Instances’ separated by comma. The instance name is the name shown in the
‘Instance Name’ column in ‘Detailed QoE Monitoring States’ view. For
example, for A/V Conferencing Server, the FQDN of the server is the instance
name. In case you don’t want to get any alert for two A/V Conferencing
Servers ‘avconf1.contoso.com’ and ‘avconf2.contoso.com’, you can override
‘Excluded Instances ( A/V Conferencing Server)’ to ‘avconf1.contoso.com,
avconf2.contoso.com’.

Other customizable settings include:

Parameter Name Default Comment

Include external calls False Include external calls in QoE alerting

Include VPN calls True Include calls performed over a VPN

connection

Include Wi-Fi calls True Include calls performed over a Wi-Fi

connection

Minimum affected calls 50 Minimum number of affected calls

per interval before an alert is
generated

Minimum affect users 2 Minimum number of users affected

per interval before an alert is
generated

Minutes to query 120 Sliding time window in min in which

QoE problems are retrieved and
alerted on

Following steps show how to open Override Properties dialog to override

properties of the Media Quality monitoring discovery.

1. Launch the operation Console, and go to the authoring tab.

20
2. Expand Management Pack Objects.

3. Click Object Discoveries.

4. Click Change Scope on top of Object Discoveries panel.

5. Click View all targets radio box.

6. Click the check box of LS Audio Quality for A/V Conferencing

Server and click the OK button. You can select any target that starts
with ‘LS Audio Quality for’, because the discovery is shared by all
Media Quality monitoring categories.

7. Right-click “Microsoft Lync Server 2010 QoE discovery” in Discovered

Type: LS Audio Quality for A/V Conferencing Server.

8. Click in following sequence, Overrides -> Override the Object

Discovery -> For all objects of class: LS QoE Monitoring.

9. Fill in with the new settings in Override Properties dialog, click apply to
make it take effect.

21
Fig. 6 Available override in discovery “Microsoft Lync Server 2010 QoE
discovery”

22
Deploying Synthetic transactions
(STs)
Setting up Synthetic transaction watcher node
Synthetic transactions are Lync Server 2010 cmdlets that are automatically
triggered by the management pack on a preset interval. These are executed
on a synthetic transaction watcher node which is an administrator designated
server responsible for discovery and execution of STs for each pool.
It is not recommended to use an existing Lync Server 2010 server as a
synthetic transaction watcher node. This is due to the high CPU/memory
utilization requirements for running STs. Use a new server machine (or a
virtual machine) for the synthetic transaction watcher node.
Synthetic transaction watcher node should have the Lync Server Core MSI
installed on it. To manual test if ST Watcher node is configured correctly,
please open a Lync Server Management Shell window and execute a
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 cmdlet (example: Get-CSTopology). If this
succeeds, then the watcher node has required bits installed.
You will also need to create a registry key to indicate to Operations Manager
2007 that this server is the designated ST Watcher node.

Capacity and OS Requirements:

Hardware component Minimum requirement
CPU One of the following:
· 64-bit processor, quad-core, 2.0 GHz or higher
· 64-bit 2-way processor, dual-core, 2.0 GHz or higher

Memory 4 GB
Disk Local storage with at least 10 GB free disk space on a
7,200 RPM disk drive (or equivalent)
Network 1 network adapter 1 Gbps
Operating System Windows Server 2008 SP2 or
Windows Server 2008 R2

23
Deploying synthetic transactions watcher node
The deployment of the synthetic transaction watcher node involves topology,
Active Directory Domain Services and server and Operations Manager 2007
related installation tasks. A step-by-step instruction for each task category is
listed below.

Note: For details about each of the Lync Server 2010 cmdlets that will be
used in next sections, see the cmdlet help.

Add ST Watcher Node as a trusted Microsoft Lync Server 2010

Application pool
1. Create external application pool with synthetic transaction watcher
node machine as a member. While creating use machine FQDN as
pool FQDN. To create the pool you can run the following cmdlet
from the Lync Server Management Shell:
New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity <PoolFQDN> -Site
<SiteID> -Registrar <RegistrarPoolFQDN> -Verbose

Where
<PoolFQDN>: Is the FQDN of the external application pool to be
created. Use watcher node machine FQDN as Pool FQDN
<SiteID>: The ID of the site where the application pool belongs to
<RegistrarPoolFQDN>: The FQDN of the registrar pool that the
external application pool depends on

Example:
New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity da12-
lct.csmonitoring.contoso.com -Site 1 -Registrar DA13-
LCT.csmonitoring.contoso.com -Verbose
2. Verify that external application pool has been added by running
Get-CsPool
3. Create an external application service entry in topology by using
following cmdlet from the Lync Server Management Shell:
New-CsTrustedApplication -ApplicationId <AppID>
-TrustedApplicationPoolFqdn <externalAppPoolFQDN> -Port
<PortNumber> -Verbose

Where
<AppID>: Is an ID for the application. For example, you can use
“STWatcherNode”
<externalAppPoolFQDN>: Is the FQDN of the external
application pool that you created in step 1
24
 <PortNumber>: Any unused port number.

Example:
New-CsTrustedApplication -ApplicationId "StWatcherNode"
-TrustedApplicationPoolFqdn da12-lct.csmonitoring.contoso.com
-Port 5587 -Verbose

Configure ST Watcher Node machine

1. Install Lync Server 2010 core and Lync Server Replica MSIs. For
instructions, see the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 deployment guide.
While executing the deployment, request and assign the “default”
certificate.
2. From the Lync Server Management Shell, run Enable-CsComputer
–verbose. This will assign group memberships and resource
permissions to support Lync Server services running on the host
computer.
3. Assign Test Users to registrar and user service clusters by using
Health Monitoring Configuration cmdlet
New-CsHealthMonitoringConfiguration -TargetFQDN
<PoolFQDN> -FirstTestUserSipUri <FirstUserSipUri>
-SecondTestUserSipUri <SecondUserSipUri> -Verbose

Where
<PoolFQDN>: Is the Pool FQDN you wish to run STs against
(where users are hosted).
<FirstUserSipUri>: Sip Uri of first test user to be used for
synthetic transaction.
<SecondUserSipUri>: Sip Uri of second test user to be used for
synthetic transaction.

Example:
New-CsHealthMonitoringConfiguration Pool1.contoso.com
-FirstTestUserSipUri "sip:MyTestUser0@csmonitoring.contoso.com"
-SecondTestUserSipUri
"sip:MyTestUser1@csmonitoring.contoso.com" –Verbose
4. Make sure synthetic transactions are working by running the
following cmdlet from in the Lync Server Management Shell.
Test-CsRegistration <RegistrarPoolFQDN> -verbose
5. Set registry key for watcher node discovery and optionally for
enabling logging by executing the following cmdlets from Lync
Server Management Shell:
New-Item -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time
Communications\Health"
25
 New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time
Communications\Health" -Name "IsSTWatcherNode" -Value true |
Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time
Communications\Health" -Name "LogOpsMgr" -PropertyType
DWord -value 2

Configuring Active directory

1. Add the synthetic transaction watcher node machine as a member
of RTCUniversalReadOnlyAdmins group.

2. From Lync Server Management Shell on watcher node run Enable-

CsComputer –Verbose

3. Restart Machine (this is required after machine is added to

RtcUniversalReadOnlyAdmins)

Configure Operations Manager Agent settings on ST Watcher

Node
1. Increase the thread pool count for synthetic transaction watcher
node by modifying the value for the below registry key.

 HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\Parame
ters

[DWORD] Thread Pool CLR Max Thread Count Min 200

decimal

Note: Spaces between the words should be reserved as shown

above.

If the registry key does not exist you can create it by running the
following PS cmdlet

New-ItemProperty -Path
"HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\HealthService\P
arameters" -Name "Thread Pool CLR Max Thread Count Min"
-propertytype DWord -value 200

2. Restart health service:

Net stop healthservice & Net start healthservice

26
Configure Synthetic Transactions Test Users
A script to provision and configure test users is available at the Script
Center

http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/archive/2010/09/22/scriptcreateandconfigures
tusers.aspx

Other Settings for Synthetic Transactions

Web (HTTP) Synthetic Transactions required the folder %SystemRoot
%\temp to have write access by the Network Service identity. Please make
sure that the ACL on %SystemRoot%\temp include write access for Network
Service.

Access to SQL Central Management Database from Watcher

node
The scripts invoking Synthetic Transactions run in the NT
Authority\Network Service identity and require read access to the
backend Microsoft® SQL Server® database software hosting the Central
Management Database (typically hosted on the first Pool backend deployed).
If you are running SQL Server processes with the Local System identity or
Network Service, no additional configuration is required.

If you are running SQL Server services using a domain account, you may get
a failure “Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON' .
In this case the recommend solution is to configure a SPN (Service Principal
Name) for SQL Instance hosting the database. For example:

setspn.exe –a MSSQLSvc/sqlserver1.contoso.com:1433 sqlserver1

where sqlserver1.contoso.com is the FQDN of the SQL Server, and 1433 is the
port, and sqlserver is the hostname/accountname for the SPN, or

setspn.exe –a MSSQLSvc/sqlserver1.contoso.com:RTCINST sqlserver1

where sqlserver1.contoso.com is the FQDN of the SQL Server, and RTCINST is

the instance name, and sqlserver is the hostname/account name of the SPN.

Please refer to the SQL and setspn.exe documentation for detail on setting up
an SPN.

27
Verify that Synthetic Transactions are working
Verify whether synthetic transaction monitoring is working or not by looking
ST state view from Microsoft Lync Server views folder see Fig. 7.

Fig. 7 Synthetic Transaction state view

Troubleshooting ST Watcher issues

On synthetic transaction watcher node look for Event ID 230, 231 for pools
discovery and Synthetic Transactions run respectively or go to synthetic
transaction state view and look ST states for the different registrar and user
services pools (see Fig 8).

Fig. 8 Synthetic Transaction state view

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Look at “ST Internal Alerts” folder in Lync Server 2010management pack on
the server that is running Operations Manager. If there is any internal alert on
discovery or ST Execution an internal alert will be created.

Configure Port monitoring for your deployment

This new feature in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 management pack provides
automatic monitoring for ports that are used by Microsoft Lync Server 2010
product inside the corporate firewall. Any port that cannot be pinged results
in an alert that is auto-resolved when the port is working again.

Lync Server 2010 port monitoring feature automatically fetches the list of
available ports in your deployment based on the Central Topology discovery
and starts monitoring them from the Synthetic Transaction Watcher node.

To verify that Port monitoring is working as expected, look at the Alert and
State views under the \Ports folder. The port monitoring solution runs on
Synthetic Transaction Watcher Node and will not work until the Watcher is
configured correctly. The State view shows the health state of each port that
is automatically discovered using the Lync Server 2010 topology information
and monitored by this Management Pack. (See Fig. 9 for an example Port
State View.)

Fig. 9 Port Monitoring State View

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Note: Depending on your environment (HLB or DNS load balancing) and the
Pools deployed (Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition) some alerts from Port
monitoring may not be relevant to your deployment.

When you deploy this management pack for the first time and enable Port
monitoring, it is recommended to go through all alerts raised by port
monitoring and disable the alerts/monitors that are not relevant to your
deployment. This will create a base-line for ports that are expected to work.
After this base-line, any new alerts should be indicative of real failures in the
deployment.

Because port monitoring requires configuration specific to your environment,

the alerts from this feature are not automatically included in the
High/Medium/Other Priority Alerts views. They are only available in the Alerts
view in the \Ports folder.

Configure URL monitoring for your deployment

This new feature in Lync Server 2010 management pack provides automatic
monitoring for URLs that are used by Lync Server 2010 for conference join
scenarios. Any URL that cannot be pinged results in an alert that is auto-
resolved when that URL is working again.

Lync Server 2010 URL monitoring feature automatically fetches the list of
available meeting URLs defined in your deployment based on the Central
Topology discovery and starts monitoring them from the Synthetic Transaction
Watcher node.

To verify that URL monitoring is working as expected, look at the Alert and
State views under the \Simple URL folder. These alerts (like Port monitoring
alerts) only appear in the views in the Simple URL folder. They do not appear
in the High/Medium/Other Priority Alerts views.

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How Health Rolls Up
Management Pack Description
Object

LS Deployment Represents the deployment of Microsoft Lync Server 2010 in

the organization

LS Site Lync Server 2010 Site represents different geographical

locations where services are deployed

LS Pool Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Pool (within a Site) that provides
communications services such as Instant Messaging,
Conferencing to users. Applicable to Frontend Pools, Edge
Pools, Director Pools, even if there is only a single machine in
a given pool

LS Server Role Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Server Role hosting LS Service

LS Service Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Service represents a functionality

deployed on a specific machine (such as User Service on
fp01.contoso.com)

LS Component Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Component is a part of the

"Service" (such as: Address Book Download component is a
part of the Web Service)

LS Pool Watcher Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Pool Watcher is an instance of

Synthetic Transactions that are running against one Pool

LS Registrar Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Registrar Pool Watcher is an

Watcher instance of Synthetic Transactions that are running against
one Registrar Pool

LS User Services Microsoft Lync Server 2010 User Services Pool Watcher is an
Watcher instance of Synthetic Transactions that are running against
one User Services Pool

LS Voice Watcher Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Voice Pool Watcher is an instance
of Synthetic Transactions that are running against one Voice
Pool

LS Port Watcher Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Port Watcher is an instance of Port
Checks running against one Pool.

Simple URL Simple URL Watcher node - performs HTTPS probing of the
Watcher configured Simple URLs in a deployment

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32
Health Rollup Diagram
LS Deployment
Health Rollup: Percentage 51%
Health Rollup: Worst Of

LS Site

LS Pool

LS Server Role

LS Service

LS Component

Component Monitoring on individual LS server

Since an LS Pool can contain multiple individual LS Server systems (with one
more LS server roles, LS services, and LS components), a failure of an
individual server or component is less critical to the overall health of the LS
Pool, as other servers in the same pool can provide the application service to
the client. The health will roll up on a percentage level to the LS pool. (Health
Rollup: More than 50% of LS server roles in an LS pool are affected).

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 LS Deployment Health Rollup: Worst Of

LS Site

LS Pool

LS Pool Watcher

LS Registrar Watcher

LS Port Watcher No Health Rollup

LS User Services Watcher

Simple URL Watcher No Health Rollup

LS Voice Watcher

Synthetic Transaction probes running against LS Pool

The LS Pool Watcher performs synthetic transactions and probing and against
an LS pool. Consecutive failure of one or more synthetic transactions
(consecutive polling interval) will rollup critical health state to the pool level
(Worst of any Synthetic Transaction).

Note: LS Port Watcher, and global Simple URL Watcher do not roll up health
state.

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Maintenance
Pool Maintenance
When performing maintenance on a Pool (including the Standard Edition
server), please use the Tasks provided in this management pack (Action
Pane) to put the entire pool in maintenance mode. This ensures that the Pool
and all its associated dependencies are put into maintenance mode.

To do this: go to the 5. Pools view in Operations Manager 2007 Console, then

select the Pool in the main window, and choose “Put a LS Pool in
maintenance mode” from the Actions pane on the right.(see Fig 10)

Fig. 10 Pool Maintenance Task Action

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Now, specify the duration of your maintenance window by overriding the
MaintenanceWindowInMinutes Task Parameter and click Run to execute the
Task. (see Fig 11)

Fig. 11 Pool Maintenance Task

Running this Task will put the following objects in maintenance mode in
SCOM:

a) The Lync Server pool that this Task was invoked for.

b) All Lync Server roles on Servers that are part of that pool. (Example:
Front End Servers that are part of an Enterprise Edition pool)

c) Synthetic Transaction Watchers that are monitoring that Pool. This

includes: User Services Watcher, Registrar Watcher and Voice Watcher

36
 d) All Ports that are being monitored for that pool

Here’s sample output from running this Task (see Fig 12)

Fig. 12 Pool Maintenance Task sample output

Similarly, to bring a Pool out of maintenace window, use the “Bring a LS pool
out-of-maintenance mode” Task.

37
To reduce alert noise, please ensure that any pools or servers that are
present in your Lync Server topology, but have not been installed/activated
are put into maintenance mode as well.

Server maintenance
This applies to any server role that is deployed in a “Highly Available”
configuration (example: a Front-end server in a Pool). To perform
maintenance on a specific server where Lync Server components are
installed, use the normal Operations Manager 2007 procedure to put that
Server in maintenance mode.

Navigate to 6.Servers view, choose the Server from the main window and
click on “Start Maintenance Mode” in the Actions pane on the right. (See Fig.
13)

Fig. 13 Server Maintenance

To reduce alert noise, please ensure that any pools or servers that are
present in your Lync Server topology, but have not been installed/activated
are put into maintenance mode as well.

38
Configuring Notifications
Notifications are messages that are automatically sent when an alert occurs on a
monitored system. To configure a notification, you must first choose the format of the
notification, and then define what information the notification should contain, and
finally define who should get the notifications. Each of these definitions must be
completed in the following order.
1. Enabling a notification channel.
The available notifications channels are e-mail, instant messaging, Short
Message Service, and command.

2. Create a notification recipient.

A notification recipient defines when and from what device notifications can
be sent.

3. Create a notification subscription that defines who receives notifications.

You can limit who receives notifications by user role, group membership,
object types, alert criteria such as severity, priority, resolution state, and even
category of alert, as well as configure alert aging.
For more details on how to configure notifications please refer system center
operations manager documentation.
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 classifies alerts in three categories
1. High priority alerts from synthetic transactions and call failure alerts
2. Medium priority alerts from the different Lync Server components
3. Other Alerts - non-service impacting from different Lync Server
components
Hence you can create different subscription rules for the above classifications.

a. To get notifications from High Priority Alerts add the following

criteria in the subscription

Raised by any instance of LS Registrar Watcher

LS User Services Watcher
LS Voice Watcher
Priority High
Resolution State New, Closed (This will enable notification both
when issue happens and issue resolved)
b. To get notifications about service impacting failures from Lync
Server components add the following criteria in the subscription

Raised by any instance of LS Call Reliability Watcher

LS Access Edge Component
LS Address Book File Handler Component
LS Address Book Query Component
LS Application Sharing Component
LS Archiving Component
LS Audio Conferencing Provider Component
LS Audio Video Authentication Edge Component
39
 LS Audio Video Conferencing Component
LS Audio Video Edge Component
LS Call Announcement Service Component
LS Call Detail Reporting Component
LS Call Park Service Component
LS Central Management File Transfer Agent
Component
LS Central Management Master Agent
Component
LS Certificate Provisioning Component
LS Communicator Web App Component
LS Conferencing Auto Attendant Component
LS Data Conferencing Component
LS Device Update Server Component
LS Expand Distribution List Component
LS Instant Message Conferencing Component
LS Location Information Component
LS MCU Factory Component
LS Mediation Server Component
LS Policy Decision Point Component
LS PowerShell Server Component
LS Presence Focus Component
LS QOE Component
LS Registrar Component
LS Replication Agent Component
LS Response Group Component
LS Web Conferencing Edge Component
LS Audio Quality for A/V Conferencing Server
LS Audio Quality for Mediation Server and Client
Endpoint Leg
LS Audio Quality for Gateway and Mediation
Server Leg
LS Audio Quality for Gateway (Mediation Server
Bypass)
LS Audio Quality for Calls from or to a Subnet
LS Audio Quality for Calls within a Site
LS Audio Quality for Calls between Sites
LS Audio Quality for Calls between Regions
Priority Medium
Resolution State New, Closed (This will enable notification both
when issue happens and issue resolved)
a. To get notifications about non service impacting failures from Lync
Server components use the criteria in b) above by replacing priority
with Low.

40
Files in This Management Pack
The Lync Server 2010 Management Pack includes the following files:

• Microsoft.LS.2010.Monitoring.mp

• EULA.RTF

Create a New Management Pack for Customizations

Most vendor management packs are sealed so that you cannot change any of
the original settings in the management pack file. However, you can create
customizations, such as overrides or new monitoring objects, and save them
to a different management pack. By default, Operations Manager 2007 saves
all customizations to the Default Management Pack. As a best practice, you
should instead create a separate management pack for each sealed
management pack you want to customize.

Creating a new management pack for storing overrides has the following
advantages:

• It simplifies the process of exporting customizations that were

created in your test and pre-production environments to your
production environment. For example, instead of exporting the
Default Management Pack that contains customizations from
multiple management packs, you can export just the management
pack that contains customizations of a single management pack.

• You can delete the original management pack without first needing
to delete the Default Management Pack. A management pack that
contains customizations is dependent on the original management
pack. This dependency requires you to delete the management
pack with customizations before you can delete the original
management pack. If all of your customizations are saved to the
Default Management Pack, you must delete the Default
Management Pack before you can delete an original management
pack.

• It is easier to track and update customizations to individual

management packs.

For more information about sealed and unsealed management packs, see
Management Pack Formats (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108355). For
more information about management pack customizations and the Default

41
Management Pack, see About Management Packs in Operations Manager 2007
(http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108356).

Optional Configuration
Enabling Performance Threshold and Collection Rules
The following performance collection rule and matching threshold monitor are
disabled by default in the Management Pack. Collection and threshold on this
metric is typically not required

Rule Name Reporting and Troubleshooting

Performance collection for :
PERF_DP_NET_SERVER_CON
NECTIONS_CURRENT
(Current number of active
connections to Web
Conferencing Server)
This rule collects this performance counter for
reporting/troubleshooting purposes for the
counter:
PERF_DP_NET_SERVER_CONNECTIONS_CURREN
T
The total number of server connections that are
currently active.

Monitor: Current number of Monitor: The total number of server connections

active connections to Web that are currently active.
Conferencing Server
Expected number of connections to each Web
Conferencing Server is 4.

If there are no connections currently active to

Web Conferencing Server, the reason could be
an incorrect configuration where the Web
Conferencing Servers are not able to connect to
the Web Conferencing Edge Server. It is also
possible that the Web Conferencing Server has
malfunctioned and is not running in a healthy
state

Slow WAN Links or Large Branch Office Deployments

Lync Server 2010 survivable branch office appliances and branch office
servers are supported. No specific (additional) bandwidth requirements are
applicable for monitoring these appliances or servers.
42
Security Considerations
Lync Server 2010 supports Operations Manager Agent running as Local
System. Discoveries other workflows have to be run as “Network Service”
(Run As account) which is configured by default. Modification of the Run As
profile to a different account is not supported.

Low-Privilege Environments
Lync Server 2010 Management Pack does not support Low-Privileged
Operations Manager Agent Deployments.

Run As Profiles
The profile “Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Profile” is defined as “Network
Service”, and cannot be changed to a different account. Only “Network
Service” as sufficient access to the Lync Server 2010 Central Management
Database.

Management Pack problems and

resolutions
Problem: Management Pack is deployed, but nothing is discovered.

Resolution: Ensure that “Agent Proxy” is enabled for all Lync Server 2010
managed nodes.

Problem: Edge servers are not discovered.

Resolution: By default, the discovery of edge servers is disabled. Override

value of DiscoverEdgeServerRole property of LS Central Topology Discovery
object to ‘True’.

Problem: Synthetic Transactions fail with the error “Login failed for user 'NT
AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON'”.

Resolution: See Access to SQL Central Management Database from Watcher

node

43
Problem: HTTP (Address Book) Synthetic Transactions are failing.

Resolution: See configuration for Other Settings for Synthetic Transactions.

Problem: No test users are configured for Synthetic Transactions.

Resolution: See Configure Synthetic Transactions Test Users.

Problem: QoE monitoring is failing.

Resolution: Ensure that the Monitoring Server has access to the QoE
database. See Deployment steps for QoE Monitoring.

Problem: URL monitoring is not working.

Resolution: Ensure that the configured Simple URLs are accessible from the
watcher node (DNS resolution, and possibly HTTP web proxy access).

Problem: Port monitoring reports errors.

Resolution: See note about Port Monitoring.

44