Haiku #133

But there is no joy

In Mudville : where are the A

V Edge cmdlets?

 

Last night the author of today's haiku and his son went to watch the Seattle Mariners take on the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. (Who still retain their title of "team with the dumbest name in all of sports.") Are we going to report back the highlights of the game? Of course we are:

 

· The woman with the world's smallest head sat in front of the author and his son. Which, if anyone is going to sit in front of you, the woman with the world's smallest head is a good choice.

OK, fine: her head wasn't that small. It just looked small because she was wearing a sweater with these big, huge shoulder pads.

· The author of today's haiku defeated his son in the game-long "predict what the next hitter will do" contest. (Which is pretty much what the name implies: before the hitter steps into the batter's box you have to predict what he will do during that at-bat; for example, "He will single to left centerfield, and the runner on first will have to stop at second.") Included in the author's uncanny predictions: his spot-on pronouncement that Greg Halman would hit a home run (his first-ever Major League home run) to centerfield.

· The author's son correctly predicted that the green boat would win the hydroplane race, although the ending of the race remains controversial. The red boat, the one picked by the author of today's haiku, had broken free of the pack and was on its way to a sure win when a giant whale lifted the green hydroplane onto its back and carried the green boat to victory. The author of today's haiku protested, but his son retorted that there's nothing in the hydroplane racing rule book that says a giant whale can't pick up your boat and carry it across the finish line. As it turns out, he was right.

· The people in front of the author and his son spent their entire game fiddling with their cell phones; they also ate sushi, teriyaki, crepes, and Caesar salad. The author and his son did not see anyone eat a hot dog.

· The author's son correctly picked Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind as the song that would be played – in its entirety! – later in the game. The author of today's haiku picked Good Lovin' by the Rascals; big mistake.

· Fortunately, the author of today's haiku redeemed himself by knowing that Deep Purple released the song Smoke on the Water in 1972. Well, OK, he didn't actually know that Deep Purple released the song Smoke on the Water in 1972; he guessed that. But the author and his son are highly competitive, and a win is a win. And at least the author didn't have to rely on a giant whale to tell him when the song was released.

What's that? Who won the game? Good question. Probably someone did. With so much else going on we didn't have time to actually watch the game, you know.

 

Note. At one point the author's son, in reference to trivia contests, blooper videos, guess-how-many-times-Felix-Hernandez'-baseball-card-will-appear-on-the-screen competitions, etc., etc., asked, "Can't anyone sit for even 30 seconds without having to be entertained?" The answer, of course, is no, they can't. Which is why you were encouraged to get up and dance, or snap a picture with your cell phone and see if it can be displayed on the jumbo video screen, or guess which hat the ball is under, or ….

 

As near as the author of today's haiku could tell, about the only thing that they didn't do in between innings or whenever there was a pitching change was talk about the CsAVEdgeConfiguration cmdlets: Get-CsAVEdgeConfiguration, New-CsAVEdgeConfiguration, Remove-CsAVEdgeConfiguration, and Set-CsAVEdgeConfiguration. How could they let us know that Justin Smoak's favorite snack is beef jerky, yet not tell us about the CsAVEdgeConfiguration cmdlets? We have no idea. But we'll take care of that matter right now.

 

Note. Actually, there's a chance that they did tell everyone about the CsAVEdgeConfiguration. For better or worse, however, the author and his son had seats at the end of the row, which meant they had to stand up 3 or 4 times an inning in order to let people in or out. Among other things, people can no longer sit through an entire half inning of baseball without having to get up and go – well, somewhere.

 

So what exactly are the CsAVEdgeConfiguration cmdlets? Well, as you probably know, A/V Edge servers enable audio and video traffic to be exchanged across your firewall. In turn, this allows users to access Microsoft Lync Server 2010 from across the Internet, and to exchange audio and video data with users who have logged onto the system from inside the firewall. The AV Edge server configuration settings can be assigned at the global scope, the site scope, and the service scope. (Which service? The Edge Server service, of course.) The A/V Edge configuration settings enable administrators to manage the amount of time that user authentication is valid before it must be renewed, and to limit the amount of bandwidth that can be used by a single user or a single port.

 

Not quite as exciting as the hydroplane races, but way better than picking the song that will be played – in its entirety! – later in the game.

 

Because there are so few parameters available for AV Edge servers, using these cmdlets is incredibly easy. For example, suppose you want to limit the global Edge server settings to the following: no more than 5000 kilobits per second of bandwidth allocated to a single port, and no more than 8000 kilobits per second of bandwidth allocated to a single user. How do you do that? Why, like this, of course:

 

Set-CsAVEdgeConfiguration -Identity global –MaxBandwidthPerPortKb 5000 –MaxBandwidthPerUserKb 8000

 

That's really all there is to it. If you want to allow an authentication token to be used for 24 hours before it expires then use a command like this:

 

Set-CsAVEdgeConfiguration -Identity global –MaxTokenLifetime 1.00:00:00

 

With that syntax, 1.00:00:00 represents 1 day, 00 hours, 00 minutes, and 00 seconds. What if you wanted to limit the token lifetime to 12 hours? Then you'd use syntax like this:

 

Set-CsAVEdgeConfiguration -Identity global –MaxTokenLifetime 12:00:00

 

It's that easy.

 

 

Needless to say, you can use the New-CsAVEdgeConfiguration cmdlet to create new AV Edge settings (at the site or service scope); use Remove-CsAVEdgeConfiguration to remove any existing AV Edge settings; and call Get-CsAVEdgeConfiguration any time you want to review those existing settings. This command returns all your AV Edge settings:

 

Get-CsAVEdgeConfiguration

 

Not fancy enough for you? OK, well, this command tells you whether you have any settings where the token lifetime is greater than the default value of 8 hours:

 

Get-CsAVEdgeConfiguration | Where-Object {$_.MaxTokenLifetime –gt "08:00:00"}

 

And this one lets you know if any of your settings allow any one user fewer than 10000 kilobits per second of bandwidth (also a default value):

 

Get-CsAVEdgeConfiguration | Where-Object {$_.MaxBandwidthPerUserKb –lt 10000}

 

Let's be honest: would your average baseball fan prefer to know how to retrieve information about their AV Edge server configuration settings, or would your average baseball fan prefer to know that Jack Wilson's favorite type of food is Mexican? That's what we thought. But like we said, for some reason the CsAVEdgeConfiguration cmdlets didn't come up during last night's game. No wonder attendance was only 19,321: you have to give the people what they want.

 

Note. 19,321? To quote the old baseball cliché, apparently a whole bunch of people came disguised as empty seats.

 

Oh, and in case the suspense is killing you, the Mariners won the game 3-1. The score was tied 0-0 with two outs in the bottom of the 7th when Carlos Peguero hit a ground ball up the middle that looked like it would end the rally. Right before the shortstop could make the play, however, the ball hit second base and ricocheted into the outfield and two runs scored.

 

Either that or the ball hit a giant whale and ricocheted into the outfield. Regardless, two runs scored and the Mariners won.

 

See you tomorrow.