Migrating OCS conference directories to Lync the hard way

A few evenings ago I ran into a scenario where moving a conference directory from OCS to Lync failed, and the conference directory ended up in this limbo state where it wasn’t on Lync, I couldn’t move it back to OCS, and the conferencing attendant wouldn’t recognize any PSTNs IDs which were part of the directory. Not a great scenario.

After running Move-CsConferenceDirectory I could verify the move was in progress, but it never completed. The status would show it was trying to move, and OCS eventually started throwing errors that it no longer had a conference directory, but it never fully made it to Lync. The TargetServerIfMoving parameter stayed populated:

Get-CsConferenceDirectory -Identity 5
Identity: 5
ServiceId: UserServer:OCSPOOL.ptown.local
TargetServerIfMoving: UserServer:LYNCPOOL.ptown.local

Trying to run Move-CsConferenceDirectory again would consistently fail with the following errors:

WARNING: Move operation failed for conference directory with ID “5”. Cannot
perform a rollback because data migration might have already started. Retry the
operation.
WARNING: Before using the -Force parameter, ensure that you have exported the
conference directory data using DBImpExp.exe and imported the data on the
target pool. Refer to the DBImpExp-Readme.htm file for more information.
Exception from HRESULT: 0xC3EE7950, Microsoft.Rtc.Management.ConferenceDirectoryCmdlets.MoveConferenceDirectoryCmdlet

In the end I needed to export the data from the OCS directory via DbImpExp, force the directory to move, and then import the data. Not the cleanest route, but it works. The order is important, so be patient.

On the OCS pool and database export the conference directory data:

DbImpExp.exe /hrxmlfile:C:\Temp\OCSDirectory5.xml /SQLServer:OCS-SQL.ptown.local /restype:confdir

Only once you’re positive you have a good export (Read: opened the file and checked!), and made a copy of it you can force the Move-CsConferenceDirectory operation:

Move-CsConferenceDirectory 5 -TargetPool LYNCPOOL.ptown.local -Force

Congrats. You’ve moved the directory to Lync, but it’s empty. Copy the .xml export file to a FE in the Lync pool. On the Lync pool and database import the directory data while specifying the conference directory ID to recover the old data:

DbImpExp.exe /import /hrxmlfile:C:\Temp\OCSDirectory5.xml /SQLServer:LYNC-SQL.ptown.local /restype:confdir /dirid:5

At this point I could see the directory was no longer moving because TargetServerIfMoving was empty, and the conference attendant was now recognizing PSTN IDs which had been created against this directory.

Get-CsConferenceDirectory -Identity 5
Identity: 5
ServiceId: UserServer:LYNCPOOL.ptown.local
TargetServerIfMoving: 

Again, this is a good reason to always do a DbImpExp.exe dump before moving directories or databases around. Those .XML files can save your skin!