The Planning Tool for Lync Server 2010 asks you a series of in-depth questions about your deployment and then provides prescriptive guidance to help you plan and deploy Lync Server 2010.

Author: Stephanie Pierce

Publication date: February 2011

Product version: Lync Server 2010

The final release of the Planning Tool for Lync Server 2010 is now available for download! The tool provides prescriptive guidance to help you plan and deploy Lync Server 2010. With all the functionality that Lync Server 2010 has to offer, it can be challenging to determine which server roles you need to deploy, what ports to set, what certificates you need, your firewall settings and DNS settings, and planning for mediation servers and gateways with existing voice infrastructure. The Planning Tool helps simplify the process for you by asking you a series of questions about features that interest you, as well as capacity planning for each of your central and branch sites. Based on your answers to the questions, the tool provides the following:

  • Recommended topologies for your central and branch sites
  • Recommended hardware configuration
  • Port information for each server role
  • Edge network diagram for External user access
  • DNS, firewall, and certificate reports
  • Documentation to successfully plan and deploy Lync Server 2010
  • Export of topologies to Visio
  • Export of site, hardware, and port information to Microsoft Excel
  • Export your topology to Topology Builder, for a faster, easier setup experience

For those of you familiar with the Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2, we listened to your feedback and added a lot of new functionality for this release. This includes:

  • Support for virtualized server roles for your topology
  • More granular capacity guidance
  • Support for branch sites
  • Display of site information, such as number of users and number of enabled users for various modalities on your topology page
  • Invitation to participate in the Customer Experience Program
  • Integration of the Edge Planning Tool into the Planning Tool, providing you with an edge network diagram, and reports for DNS, firewall, and certificates
  • Support for exporting your topology file to Topology Builder for a faster, easier Lync Server setup experience
  • New improved Visio diagrams, including concurrent PSTN calls connecting through the central sites
  • More supported topologies for Enterprise Voice and dial-in conferencing
  • Improved navigation experience
  • Better accommodation for different screen resolutions

Check out the Planning Tool for Lync Server 2010 today. We love to hear from you, so please keep sending your feedback our way.

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Keywords: Lync Server 2010, Planning Tool