Voice Resiliency in Lync Server 2010

Justin MorrisUC Consultant (and Australian)

@jm_deluxe

www.justin-morris.net

justin@justin-morris.net

What’s your story?

• Have you deployed Lync already?• Connected OCS/Lync to the PSTN before?• Know what a SIP 301 Redirect is?• Know what SDP and RTCP is?• Don’t know what I’m talking about?

New Resiliency Features in Lync

• DNS Load Balancing• Lync client caches front end IP addresses.• FEs balance users across servers.• HLB only for HTTP traffic.

• Registrar Service on each Front End Server.• Backup Registrar.• Limited Functionality Mode in Lync.

Business Requirements

• Determine them!• Know what it is your organisation wants• Is it productivity gains? Cost savings?

• Work out what features of Lync you will deploy.

• What level of availability/recovery do you require?

• In short - do the necessary due diligence.

What technical solutions are available?

• Within, and for your Central Site• Enterprise Edition Front End Pool• Metropolitan Data Centre Resiliency• Backup Registrar

• For your Branch Sites• Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA)• Survivable Branch Server (SBS) + Gateway• Standard Edition Server + Gateway

Resiliency within your Central Site

• Enterprise Edition Front End Pool• Up to 10 Front End servers• AV Conferencing Server Role can be split

out for greater scalability• Backend on SQL 2005-2008 R2 Cluster• Problem: snom phones don’t like EE pools

because they can’t understand DNS load balancing

Resiliency within your Central Site

Resiliency for your Central Site

• Backup Registrar• Requires a Standard Edition server

allocated as a Backup Registrar for a pool in Topology Builder.

• Secondary DNS SRV records must be created.

• Client gets “limited functionality mode”.

Resiliency for your Central Site

Resiliency for your Central Site

• Metropolitan Data Centre• The most difficult to deploy and manage.• Requires: • Stretched VLAN across sites. • Stretched SQL 2008/2008 R2 cluster.• Synchronous data replication.• <20 ms latency between sites.• Global hardware/DNS load balancing.

Resiliency for your Central Site

Branch Site Resiliency

• Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA).• 1 RU chassis running Windows and Lync.• Has ISDN E1 ports in it for PSTN

connectivity.• Made by hardware vendors.• For 25 - 1000 users.• Has no conferencing capability.• Just Registrar and Mediation services.• Users are homed on this pool (server).

Branch Site Resiliency - SBA

Branch Site Resiliency

• Survivable Branch Server (SBS) + Gateway.• A Windows server you deploy.• For 1000 - 5000 users.• Has no conferencing capability.• Just Registrar and Mediation services.• Users are homed on this pool (server).

Branch Site Resiliency - SBS

Branch Site Resiliency

• Standard Edition Server + Gateway• A Windows server you deploy.• For greater than 5000 users.• Does have full conferencing capability i.e.

MCUs.• Users are homed on this server.

Branch Site Resiliency – SE Server

Conclusion

• Know what your existing IT environment is capable of.

• Engage your voice, network, security and server teams WELL in advance.

• Ensure you understand your voice resiliency requirements and select a solution accordingly.

• Enjoy the ride and the awesomeness.