Using Best Practices Analyzer

The Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer is a diagnostic tool that gathers information from an Office Communications Server environment and determines whether the configuration is set according to Microsoft best practices. Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer was released in September 2007 and is similar in usage to the Best Practices Analyzer for other Microsoft products, such as Exchange Server and SQL Server. A new analyzer will not be released for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. However, a new set of XML files will be released that will update the tool when run against an Office Communications Server 2007 R2 infrastructure.

Direct from the Source: Inside Best Practices Analyzer

Sasa Juratovic

Senior Program Manager, Office Communications Server Customer Experience

If you are familiar with Exchange Server, Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, or SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer, you will quickly become familiar with Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer. All of these tools are based on the same Best Practices Analyzer framework, which offers a similar interface.

Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer checks for the following:

  • Readiness of your environment before you begin to deploy Office Communications Server

  • Compliance with Microsoft’s best practices as you install the different Office Communications Server components

  • Ongoing operational compliance with Microsoft’s best practices, for example, by highlighting missing updates as well as providing information about how to rectify the problem

After you install the tool, you will find the following files in the installation directory:

  • rtcbpa.exe and accompanying dynamic link libraries (DLLs) Managed code binaries that implement GUI and core engine

  • XML configuration files Set of files that implement and drive data collection and rules logic

  • Help file Provides background information about the tool and articles that go with the rules

Note

Although the Best Practices Analyzer targets Office Communications Server, it can also discover Live Communications Server servers. However, the rules are primarily focused on the latest version.

The first time you run Best Practices Analyzer, the tool will ask you if you want to automatically check for updates every time it starts. Even if you do not select this option, you can always select Updates (located on the left-hand side in Graphical User Interface) and manually check for updates. When Best Practices Analyzer checks for updates, it will do so over Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). Downloaded updates can be found in the tools installation directory.

By selecting Select A Best Practices Scan to View (located on the left-hand side in Graphical User Interface), you can view any previously generated or imported report. Reports contain information that is categorized in three main buckets:

  • Informational. For example, the version of the product that the server is running

  • Warnings. For example, data and log files for the Real-Time Communications (RTC) database are located on the same physical hard disk

  • Errors. For example, the server is missing a critical update

One of the tool’s best features is its ability to report error or warning information, depending on the severity of the identified issue. Warning and error information can be easily addressed by following guidance on the screen and reading the accompanying Help file. This specific aspect of the tool is implemented through the rules engine. The key value of the Best Practices Analyzer is the rules engine that automates the condensed knowledge from Microsoft engineers and consultants’ expertise learned through years of experience. This tool also generates log files that contain runtime information to troubleshoot issues.

There are number of scenarios that Best Practices Analyzer is particularly well suited for, such as:

  • Auditing. Best Practices Analyzer can generate a report that provides extensive information about the Office Communications Servers it was able to detect.

  • Troubleshooting. The Best Practices Analyzer can be used to troubleshoot problems, either internally or with the help of Microsoft Support. The report generated will highlight errors and warnings when the configuration does not follow Microsoft’s best practices, and it provides help topics as additional information.

  • Patch Management. As your Office Communications Server environment changes, either through reconfiguration, addition of new server roles, or removal of others, Best Practices Analyzer will identify and highlight updates that are missing.

The following Real World sidebar describes a usage example for using the Best Practices Analyzer.

Real World: Using the Best Practices Analyzer

Mike Warren

Senior Consultant, Modality Systems Ltd.

As a consultant, I occasionally find myself troubleshooting Office Communications Server 2007 issues while out in the field on customer sites. Prior to the availability of the Best Practices Analyzer tool, it was difficult to track down the root cause of customer issues and very time consuming to generate a report detailing the Office Communications Server infrastructure.

We had a customer that installed Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition. The person who did the installation had left the company and the IT staff was not happy about the lack of knowledge transfer and documentation, so I was commissioned to perform a detailed report of the installation.

One of the results of a full Best Practices Analyzer environment scan indicated that an important update, KB945055, was missing from the Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition Server in this installation (shown as an error rule in Figure 20-19). Double-clicking the item and selecting Tell Me More About This Issue And How To Resolve It opened a Help file that provided most of the important information about the issue, as well as how to resolve it.

Best Practices Analyzer report

Figure 20-19. Best Practices Analyzer report

I consistently tell customers that it is imperative to have a good Patch Management Process in place to ensure all servers are kept up to date with the latest hotfixes and service packs from Microsoft. I resolved this issue by downloading and installing the Office Communications Server 2007 update package and applying it on all Office Communications Server 2007 Severs within the pool.

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