New-CSSingleRegionNetwork.ps1 – Automate Lync Network Site and Subnet Creation

To Automate Lync Network Site and Subnet Creation with more than one Lync Network Region, please see my New-CSMultiRegionNetwork.ps1 script here.

With Lync Server 2010 and 2013, there are Lync Regions, Lync Sites, and Lync Subnets.  There are three functions in which these can be utilized:

• Call Admission Control
• Controlling Media Bypass Behavior
• Ability to assign a Location Policy to Network Sites so users 911 will route to a given gateway based on the Network Site they are currently located on
• Provide Site to Site Media Quality behavior in the Monitoring Server Location Reports

Active Directory (AD) is a good starting point to gather all the information on your Sites as well as your Subnets.

Script Functionality

To help automate this process, I wrote the New-CSSingleRegionNetwork.ps1 script.  The purpose of this script is to:

• Make a connection to AD and record every AD subnet that exists and its corresponding AD Site
• Will create the AD Site in Lync Network Sites
  • Something to note is that AD Sites support non-alphanumeric characters such as a hyphen while Lync Network Sites do not support non-alphanumeric characters.  Because of this, this script will create the Lync Network Site without any non-alphanumeric characters.  It is safe to re-run the script more than once as the script will always take notice that an AD Site with non-alphanumeric characters will match a Lync Network Site with non-alphanumeric characters.  Important: Be sure that you don’t have an AD Site that would match another AD Site if non-alphanumeric characters were to be removed.  An example if you had two AD Sites: One called Site01 and another called Site-01.  When the process to remove non-alphanumeric characters occur, they will both conflict.
    
  • If any Lync Network Sites are created, the script will pause for 15 seconds to allow the Lync Network Sites to instantiate.  If no Lync Network Sites exist, it will move immediately on to subnets.
  • It will create the Lync Network Subnets and assign them to their corresponding Lync Network Site

Miscellaneous Notes

Something to note is that the script will only function with one Lync Network Region.  There are several reasons why:

• I wanted this script to be completely automated.  If you have one Region, run the script and the script will automatically create all Lync Network Sites, Lync Network Subnets, and associate everything accordingly without any administrative intervention whatsoever.
• I thought about checking if multiple Regions exist and if they do, prompt what Network Region needs to be assigned to a Network Site every time a Network Site were to be created.  If you had a ton of Network Sites, this would be incredibly annoying.  Because of this, I will be making another script sometime soon that will run in an Import and Export Mode.  The Export Mode would dump all the AD Sites and AD Subnets to CSV where you can then create a Region Field.  You would then be able to run the script in Import Mode which would then create the Network Sites, Network Subnets, and associate everything accordingly to what is in the CSV.

Video Demonstration

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Changelog

v1.0 – Script Creation