First published on TECHNET on Nov 21, 2010
Ice: silent, deadly.
But we need a haiku – How
'bout ServerSchema?
A few years ago, there was an animated children's film called
Balto
, a film based on the true-life exploits of a sled dog named, well,
Balto
. (Interesting coincidence, isn’t it?) Balto, oblivious to danger, and with no regard to his personal safety, helped to lead a dog team that rushed diphtheria medicine from Anchorage, Alaska
to Nome, Alaska, just in time to combat an outbreak of the deadly disease. It was that journey that inspired the creation of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Note
. In the movie, Balto could also talk. However, we suspect that might be artistic license on the part of the filmmakers.
So why do we mention Balto? Well, yesterday, the Seattle area was hit with a pre-Thanksgiving Day snowstorm. We didn't get a
lot
of snow – maybe a couple of inches – but what we
did
get promptly turned to ice. In turn, that pretty much shut down the entire area, lock, stock, and barrel.
Note
. But, then again, even the mere
mention
of snow tends to shut down this entire area, lock, stock, and barrel. We're not exactly winter warriors around here.
Nevertheless, despite the snow and ice, oblivious to danger, and with no regard to our own personal safety, we have managed to bring you the Lync PowerShell Haiku of the Day. Will that save anyone from diphtheria? Well, maybe not. But it's still a way better haiku than
Balto
ever wrote.
Well, OK: a
slightly
better haiku than Balto ever wrote.
Speaking of today's haiku, you might be wondering, "So does that mean that the CsAdServerSchema cmdlets are silent and deadly, too?" We don't think so; they both seem pretty tame to us. Granted, the first group of testers who were sent out to test the cmdlets never
did
return. But we think that's because they all went bowling and not because of anything the cmdlets did to them.
In fact, the two cmdlets in question –
Get-CsAdServerSchema
and
Install-CsAdServerSchema
– are not only harmless, but they're also a pair of cmdlets you might never actually use, at least not directly. (And no, sorry: we can't give you a discount if you don't ever use these two cmdlets.) The Install-CsAdServerSchema cmdlet is designed to extend your Active Directory schema, adding objects and attributes that are required before you can install Microsoft Lync Server 2010. That's obviously an important job, but there's still a good chance that you'll never call Install-CsAdServerSchema; that's because Setup calls this cmdlet for you, and it's strongly recommended that you install Lync Server by running Setup instead of somehow trying to manually install the software yourself. You know how, on an airplane, your seat cushion can function as a flotation device? The odds are that you will never,
ever
need to use your seat cushion as a flotation device. Still, it's good to know that it's there, just in case. Install-CsAdServerSchema is pretty much the same thing. The odds are that you will never,
ever
need to manually call the cmdlet, but it's good to know that it's there, just in case.
Technical note
. Just to show you that we
occasionally
have something useful to say here, keep in mind that, if you ever do need to run Install-CsAdServerSchema, the cmdlet must have access to the Active Directory Schema Master (that's the operations master role that manages Active Directory object and attribute definitions). The easiest way to make sure you have access to the Schema Master is to simply run Install-CsAdServerSchema on the Schema Master itself. If you can’t do that for some reason, then you need to make sure that the remote registry service has been enabled on the Schema Master. See
this Knowledge Base article
for more information.
As for Get-CsAdServerSchema, well, there's a chance that you might actually
use
that cmdlet – once. Get-CsAdServerSchema returns a single value that tells you whether or not Active Directory has been extended and is prepared for the installation of Lync Server. If
Get-CsAdServerSchema
returns the value SCHEMA_VERSION_STATE_CURRENT, the schema has been extended. If the cmdlet returns any other value, then the schema has not been extended. Again, Get-CsAdServerSchema runs as part of Setup, so you might never ever run it. On the other hand, after Setup is complete, you might want to run the cmdlet one time, just to make sure that the schema was correctly modified.
It's either that, or have a new schema shipped down by dog sled from Anchorage, Alaska. We'll leave that up to you.
