Guess what? There is a

Cmdlet for setting your

Archiving server.


Hello, and welcome to the Lync Server PowerShell Haiku of the Day! You know, we suspect that no one out there will be able to guess where today's haiku is coming from – what's that? Well, yeah, as a matter of fact it is coming from our offices here in Redmond. OK, well, then you'll never guess what today's haiku is about. Today's haiku is – well, yes, today's haiku is about the Set-CsArchivingServer cmdlet. Good guess.


You know, the non-author of today's haiku told the author of today's haiku that playing a guessing game would be a lousy way to start today's column. And guess what? Yep, you got it: she was right.


Hey, there's a first time for everything.


Trivia note. When the author of today's haiku was a kid, the standard response to the question "Guess what?" was this: "That's what." In other words:


"Guess what?"




"That's what."


Obviously that was a long time ago, before things like wit and humor had been invented. During the course of a school day you would also inevitably hear a conversation like this one:


"Give me the ball back."


"Make me."


"I don't make trash, I burn it."


Uh-huh. And this classic, which was used every single day by the author's sixth grade teacher:


"Mr. Robanske, I'm confused."


"And I'm Cliff. Why don't you drop over some time?"


Thank goodness that, today, we live in a much more refined and sophisticated age.


OK, well here's something you'd never guess: we need to quit wasting time and get down to business, which means that it's time to talk about the Set-CsArchivingServer cmdlet. Of course, having said that, we should also point out that there really isn't much to say about the Set-CsArchivingServer cmdlet. The Set-CsArchivingServer cmdlet has only one job: it associates an Archiving server with an archiving database. That means that the only time you run Set-CsArchivingServer you'll be running a command similar to this one:


Set-CsArchivingServer -Identity "" -ArchivingDatabase ""


In the preceding command we've taken the Archiving server and associated it with the archiving database That's pretty much all you need to do, and pretty much all you can do. Just make sure that, after associating the Archiving server with a database, you run the Enable-CsTopology cmdlet to enable the changes:




And yes, now that you mention it, it is kind of funny: everyone expects system administration to be really hard and really complicated, and when it turns out to be incredibly simple you almost feel let down.




Just two things to keep in mind here. First, there's a good chance you'll never need to run Set-CsArchivingServer; if it's on your bucket list, well, you might want to think about replacing it with, say, "Attend Loy Krathong in Thailand." (To tell you the truth, we never heard of it, either. But it sounds fun.) You really only need to use this cmdlet if you have to move your archiving database. Otherwise, the association between Archiving server and archiving database takes place when you first deploy archiving.


Second, make sure you use the Lync Server Identity of the archiving database and not, say, the SQL Server path. You say you don't know the Lync Server identities of your archiving databases? Well, to be honest, we find that hard to believe. But, just in case, this command should help:


Get-CsService –ArchivingDatabase


And, of course, this command returns information about your Archiving servers, including the database that the server is currently associated with:


Get-CsService –ArchivingServer


Pretty handy, eh?


And guess what? Well, you're right: that is all we have for today. And yes, all things considered, today's haiku does imply that we should listen to the non-author of the haiku more often. But guess what ….