Backing up Pool and Global OCS Configurations

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Backing up your OCS server and pool configurations are only a portion of a good recovery or disaster recovery (DR) plan.  In todays blog I will concentrate more on the side of backing up your pool settings.  Backing up your pool configs can defintely help with the recovery of your OCS infrastructure in the case of a recovery, but by all means its not the end all be all for a good DR plan. 

So lets get into some nuts and bolts... 

The LCSCmd.exe command-line tool can be used to back up global-level settings, pool-level settings, and computer-level settings.

The LCSCmd.exe tool is automatically installed when Office Communications Server 2007 is installed. This tool is also available on any computer
where Office Communications Server 2007 Admins tools is installed.

Backing up the settings needed to restore Office Communications Server 2007 requires backing up the following:

Global-level and pool-level settings. This requires the following:

For a Standard Edition server environment, back up these settings on only one Standard Edition server.

For an Enterprise pool, back up these settings on only one front-end server.

Computer-level (machine-level) settings. Back up these settings on each Office Communications Server 2007 server in your deployment.

(The below instructions are pretty much step by step)

1. Log on to a Standard Edition server or a front-end server in an Enterprise pool, or to a separate computer on which Office Communications Server 2007 administrative tools have been installee, with an account that has RTCUniversalReadOnlyAdmins (at least), as well as write permissions for the
folder to which settings are to be backed up.

2. Open a command prompt. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. (maybe a little too detailed there)

3. At the command prompt, change to the directory containing the LCSCmd.exe tool (by default, <drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007).

4. To export both levels of settings (global and pool), do one of the following:

To export global-level and pool-level settings in an Enterprise pool to a single configuration file (.xml file), type the following command:
lcscmd /config /action:export /level:global,pool /configfile: <drive>:\<path>\<filename>.xml /poolname:[name of pool for which settings are to be exported]
 
To export global-level and pool-level settings for a Standard Edition server to a single configuration file (.xml file), type the following command:
lcscmd /config /action:export /level:global,pool / configfile:<drive>:\<path>\<filename>.xml /poolname

Wrap Up: Hopefull this answers some questions in regards to "Can I backup my pool or global settings in OCS 2007 in case a disaster strikes?"  I will provide more material about DR in the coming weeks\months, but really wanted to address some points that have been coming recently.