Haiku #68

[NextHop_Team]

First published on TECHNET on Mar 16, 2011

Configuration

Store location. Hey, the name

Gives us our haiku!

Technology is truly wonderful. For example, the author of today's haiku isn't even working today and yet, through the magic of technology, he's still able to write and publish this haiku. Remember the old days when, if you took a day off work, you actually had to take the day off work, because there was no way to do your job unless you were in the office? Thank goodness those days are gone, eh? Now you can work at any time, and from anywhere.

What a great time to be alive.

Of course, even if we weren't able to work even on a vacation day we'd still think it was a great time to be alive; that's because of the CsConfigurationStoreLocation cmdlets that ship with Microsoft Lync Server 2010 ( Get-CsConfigurationStoreLocation , Remove-CsConfigurationStoreLocation , and Set-CsConfigurationStoreLocation ). What's so great about these three cmdlets? Well, picture this: the year is 1787, and you're General George Washington, leading a ragtag band of American revolutionaries against the powerful British army. One of your aides comes up to you and says, "General, I'm afraid we need to change the Active Directory service control point for the Lync Server Central Management store." At that point about all that you (as George Washington) could do is throw up your hands and say, "Then the war is lost. It looks like that, from now on, Americans will be forced to have tea every afternoon, and watch reruns of Benny Hill ."

Note . Actually, having had some fantastic pastries while having afternoon tea at Kensington Palace in London, the author of today's haiku would have been fine with that whole tea thing. But reruns of Benny Hill?!? To paraphrase John Paul Jones, we have not yet begun to fight!

Fortunately, we have it much better than George Washington did: not only can we do our work from home, and on our days off, but we can also use the CsConfigurationStoreLocation cmdlets to manage Lync Server's service control point. Of course by now, you're probably saying to yourself, "John Paul Jones? Why are they quoting the former bass player for the rock group Led Zeppelin?" Well, we didn't mean that John Paul Jones; we meant this one . You might also be saying to yourself, "What's an Active Directory service control point, and why would you need to manage it anyway?"

Well, to answer that question, Active Directory uses service control points to help computers locate services. When you install Lync Server 2010, a service control point is created that provides a pointer to the Central Management store. Any computer that needs to access the Central Management store can connect to Active Directory, then use the information contained in the service control point to help it locate the computer that hosts the Central Management store (and to pinpoint the SQL Server instance for that store).

So is that something to worry about? In general, no: like we said, the service control point (SCP) is automatically created for you, and the odds are that you'll never have to think about it again. However, a time might arise when you need to move the Central Management store. (For example, maybe the computer hosting the store has given up the ghost .) If you need to move the Central Management store to another computer (or even to a different instance of SQL Server) you'll need to update the service control point in Active Directory. That's where the Set-CsConfigurationStoreLocation cmdlet comes in. For example, here's a command that changes the service control point to the SQL instance Rtc located on the computer atl-sql-001.litwareinc.com:

Set-CsConfigurationStoreLocation -SqlServerFqdn atl-sql-001.litwareinc.com -SqlInstanceName Rtc

As you can see, not much to it. If you'd just like to retrieve information about your existing Central Management store location then run Get-CsConfigurationStoreLocation:

Get-CsConfigurationStoreLocation

It doesn't get much easier than that, does it? You can also use the Remove-CsConfigurationStoreLocation to delete the existing service control point:

Remove-CsConfigurationStoreLocation

Of course, if you do that computers will no longer be able to locate the Central Management store, which means Lync Server will no longer work. Which means it's probably a good idea not to run Remove-CsConfigurationStoreLocation unless someone from Microsoft (and someone who ranks much higher on the Microsoft totem pole than, say, a Lync Server PowerShell haiku writer) instructs you to do so.

If for some reason you do delete the service control point (did we mention that, as a general rule, you shouldn't delete the service control point?) you'll need to run Set-CsConfigurationStoreLocation to create a new Active Directory SCP:

Set-CsConfigurationStoreLocation -SqlServerFqdn atl-sql-001.litwareinc.com -SqlInstanceName Rtc

If you're wondering, "Why don't I just use the New-CsConfigurationStoreLocation cmdlet to create the service control point?" well, the only thing we can tell you is this: there's no such thing as the New-CsConfigurationStoreLocation cmdlet. Use Set-CsConfigurationStoreLocation instead.

So, OK, while it's a great time to be alive, maybe it's not the absolute perfect time to be alive. But maybe someday we'll have a New-CsConfigurationStoreLocation cmdlet. Sometimes dreams do come true, you know.

And now, the author of today's haiku is off to the Experience Music Project in Seattle. (And yes, believe it or not, it's supposed to look that way.) See you tomorrow.