Cloud Connector Edition CCE v2.1.0 Released – Adds Operation Management Suite (OMS) support

Over the weekend i noticed thanks to Twitter and Tom Arbuthnot that Friday 17/11/2017 it seems Microsoft have released CCE v2.1 for Skype for Business Online 🙂

Microsoft previously announced before Ignite and SfBO is becoming Teams we should see co-existence in CCE so it could be deployed alongside Lync Server or Skype for Business Server as currently this is not possible and ive had many requests from customers for this as moving from an existing Lync Server deployment means ripping this out first and then deploying CCE but there was rumors after Ignite that coexistence with CCE will never come even in SfB Server 2019 and it seems this confirmed and not included in V2.1 😦

Microsoft now recommend configuring Hybrid on your existing Lync or SfB Server deployment or looking at deploying a third party appliance which is a bit of a u turn on previous announcement perhaps the shift to Teams has meant this maybe too much work as the focus is on Teams. Microsoft did comment on Tech Community post they will release more information on Hybrid voice so we will have to see. The post is below. This follows a post on the Tech Community saying v2.1 will come mid November check that out here

V2.1 following the Tech Community post focus on Cloud management with Operation Management Suite

Our primary goal for this release focused on improving the ability to cloud manage CCE via the Microsoft Operations Management Suite.

Tenant administrators care about monitoring the state of several indicators when managing CCE:

Key services to insure the solution is green and available
Hardware utilization for the virtual machines
Key statistics such in-bound and out bound calls to allow for fine tuning of resources

Ive been looking for release notes but cant seem to find anything as of yet only the Tech Community posts and community blog posts, highly recommend Tom Arbuthnots Posts below:

Updating to CCE v2.1

Updating option include Automatic and Manual and depends what you are configured for AutoUpdate and your maintenance time window you have configured on your tenant or you may have turned off AutoUpdates or your starting new.

Remember if you have turned off AutoUpdate you need to update to the latest release I think you have 60days before your classed as out of support so you need to schedule this update to stay in support.

I found the support statement

Microsoft supports the previous version of Cloud Connector Edition for 60 days after the release of a new version. Microsoft will support version 2.0.1 for 60 days after the release of 2.1 to allow you time to upgrade. All versions previous to 2.0.1 are no longer supported.

OMS?

Ive heard of OMS but to be honest i dont know alot so looks a have a quick look.

Whats is OMS ?

Operation Management Suite is a collection of Cloud management service entirely hosted in Azure.

Made up of number of services below but for CCE i think it will leverage Log Analytics.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt828598.aspx

OMS Pricing Details

I wondered what the pricing would be for OMS as its Azure and most things have a price tag but it seems there is a free plan but has limitations on daily limit of up to 500mb and retention period of 7 Days.

If you go reach the 500mb data analysis will stop and resume at the start of the next day.

So it looks like we can have a free offering for OMS or you can pay for the paid plan for no daily limit and up to 1Mponth retention. If you want to keep longer then you can pay.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/details/log-analytics/

OMS Log Analytics

Log Analytics provides monitoring services for OMS by collecting data from managed resources into a central repository. So we deploy an Agent to the virtual machines running on CCE and then configure what to look for, set alerts on the data we collect and view and report on the information. Looks nice and easy. Just set, collect, alert and report and seems we can also not only collect from on premises windows or linux, but Azure services and data collector api’s so you OMS can be useful for much more than just CCE if your not using it.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/operations-management-suite/operations-management-suite-overview

OMS Configuration and Configuring CCE to use OMS

You will need

Confirm Prereqs to use OMS
Configure CCE for OMS
Configure OMS
Create Alerts
Microsoft have provided Recommended minimal monitoring set so check it out on the url above.

First you need OMS and have the prereqs you need an Azure Tenant with OMS workspace, CCE v2.1 and Log Analytics new log search configuring.

For configuring on your CCE it depends if your deploying new or upgrading existing both you need to update the CloudConnector.ini file to enable OMS

Then configure OMS and specify alerts and event logs and performance counters

I think its great that you can use Cloud Monitoring and I wonder if SfB Server 2015 will take advantage of OMS as well in a similar way as it was announced with SfB Server 2019 it will take advantage of Cloud services.

Check out the details Config Information here

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt828598.aspx

Further Info and Useful Links

Version Number 2.1.0

Released 17/11/2017

Upgrade Information

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt740656.aspx

Further Information on OMS for CCE v2.1

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt828598.aspx

After upgrades it recommended to Validate the upgrades so check here

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt740653.aspx

Manual Download Link