Upcoming Restrictions on Public Certificates

A restriction to public certificates was introduced several months ago that could affect your planning of a Microsoft Lync, Exchange, or other application service deployment. While this change restricts only public certificates that contain an internal name with an expiry date after November 2015, you should be aware of this change for planning and certificate renewal purposes.
The Change: No Public Certificates with Internal Names Allowed

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Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit - Sharepoint Integration

New chapter of the Resource Kit is now available to download.

You can get it here.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit

The Lync Server 2010 Resource Kit is the technical reference for the product. This book extends the product planning, deploying, and managing documentation in the Lync Technical Library. This book serves as a companion to the product documentation to learn how the product works under the hood.

Download here.

Unified Communications Phones and Peripherals Datasheets

The powerful communication devices that are listed in these datasheets are optimized to work with Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and Microsoft Lync 2010, delivering communications solutions that are easy to deploy, use and manage.

Each datasheet provides information about each device, including:

• A thumbnail photo of the device
• Hardware type
• Name of the partner that produces the device
• Product name
• A brief description of the device
• URL for the partner's Unified Communications landing page

Download here.

Several updates on Lync documentation

Several documents were updated yesterday and there's also a new ones available, here's the list:

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Documentation Help File

This download contains a compiled help file (chm) of all the available Lync Server 2010 IT professional documentation on the Technical Library.

Lync Server 2010 Administration Guide

This document contains procedures and guidance for administering a Lync Server 2010 deployment.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Active Directory Guide

This document guides you through the process of preparing Active Directory for Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and includes the Active Directory schema reference.

Deploying Lync Server 2010 in a Multiple Forest Environment

This document explains how to deploy Lync Server 2010 in a multiple forest environment.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Standard Edition Deployment Guide

This document guides you through the process of deploying Lync Server 2010 Standard Edition and configuring dial-in conferencing.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Enterprise Edition Deployment Guide

This document guides you through the process of deploying Lync Server 2010 Enterprise Edition and configuring dial-in conferencing for Lync Server 2010.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010: Deploying Lync Server 2010 Enterprise Edition      by Using the Planning Tool

This document describes the how to deploy Lync Server 2010 Enterprise Edition by using the Planning Tool.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Enterprise Voice Guide

This download contains two documents: Deploying Enterprise Voice at Central sites and Deploying Branch Sites

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Group Chat Administration Guide

This document guides you through the process of administering Lync Server 2010 Group Chat Server and the related components that are required to let organizations set up searchable, topic-based chat rooms that persist over time, allowing geographically distributed teams to better collaborate with one another while preserving organizational knowledge.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Client and Device Deployment Guide

This download guides you through the process of deploying client software and devices for Lync 2010.

Enabling QoS with Microsoft Lync Server 2010

If your Windows Server network supports Quality of Service (QoS) management, you can take advantage of this functionality to optimize media traffic in your Microsoft Lync Server 2010 deployment. This guide shows you how.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Device Management and Troubleshooting Guide

The purpose of the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Device Management and Troubleshooting Guide is to provide guidance on how to manage and update devices. It is also intended to answer frequently asked questions. This document identifies supported topologies, configurations, and scenarios described in detail in the Lync Server device deployment and planning documentation.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Planning Guide

This document contains information for planning a deployment of Lync Server 2010 and Lync clients.

Migrating from Communications Server 2007 R2 to Lync Server 2010

This document provides guidance from migration from Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to Microsoft Lync Server 2010.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Group Chat Deployment Guide

This document guides you through the process of migrating and deploying Lync Server 2010 Group Chat Server and the related components that are required to let organizations set up searchable, topic-based chat rooms that persist over time, allowing geographically distributed teams to better collaborate with one another while preserving organizational knowledge.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Monitoring Deployment Guide

This document guides you through the process of deploying Lync Server 2010 Monitoring Server.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Archiving Deployment Guide

The purpose of the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Archiving Deployment Guide is to guide you through the process of deploying Lync Server 2010 Archiving Server and the related components that are required to support archiving of instant messaging and web conferencing (meeting) content.

Migrating from Communications Server 2007 to Lync Server 2010

This document provides guidance from migration from Office Communications Server 2007 to Microsoft Lync Server 2010.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Edge Server Deployment Guide

This document guides you through the process of deploying Lync Server 2010 edge servers and Directors.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Supportability Guide

This guide provides a central, high-level reference for supported server topologies and configurations and supported client configurations. It is also intended to answer frequently asked questions. This document identifies supported topologies, configurations, and scenarios described in detail in the Lync Server deployment and planning documentation.

Lync Server 2010 Capacity Calculator

A spreadsheet for calculating a user’s hardware requirements based on information about users and traffic.

Lync Server 2010, Stress and Performance Tool

The Lync Server 2010 Stress and Performance Tools (LSS) can be used to prepare, define and validate performance targets of user scenarios offered by on-premise Lync Server 2010 deployment. LSS includes multiple modules and can simulate simultaneous users on one or more Lync Servers. More detailed information can be found in the documentation provided within the installation package.

Server Virtualization in Microsoft Lync Server 2010

New document available to download:

This document outlines a series of best practice recommendations for running Lync Server 2010 in a virtualized environment.

You can get it here.

Lync Server 2010, Best Practices Analyzer

The Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Best Practices Analyzer is designed for administrators who want to determine the overall health of their Lync Server environment.

You can get it here.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Cmdlet Descriptions

From Lync Powershell blog:

What follows is an alphabetical list of the 530-plus cmdlets that appear in Microsoft Lync Server 2010. Each cmdlet includes a brief description extracted from the Lync Server PowerShell help file. The full help for each cmdlet can be found by clicking on the appropriate link.

Article can be seen here.

Critical Capabilities for Unified Communications

Excellent rating for Lync on a Gartner report.

More Lync related downloads available

A few more downloads are now available on Microsoft.com since yesterday.

Microsoft Lync 2010 SDK Release Candidate (RC)
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (Release Candidate) Planning Documents
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (Release Candidate) Getting Started
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (Release Candidate) System Requirements
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (Release Candidate) Lab Deployment Guide

CS 2010 branded as Lync?

There's been some gossips around a possible branding of CS 2010 as Lync 2010.

There was even a blog, that looks like a hoax, talking about Lync. The blog does not have a lot of information and there's a few old OCS 2007 R2 screens as well so it doesn't look very legit.

But last Wednesday a RC of "Lync Server 2010" showed up on Microsoft Downloads and yesterday the Lync Server 2010 Planning tool (RC) was also released there.

I've tried the Planning tool and... it does look like a Planning tool for the new Communications Server 2010. :-)

Nothing has changed yet on CS "14" homepage but i've found this support page with a mix of Communicator, OCS 2010, Communications Server 2010 and Lync labels.

Now, i need to download and try that Lync RC. :-D