Mac Office 2011 general availability is slated for the end of the month. With this release comes the anticipated Mac Communicator 2011 which works with both OCS 2007 R2 and Lync Server 2010. For a glimpse of the Mac features view my other post here. A new Mac Communicator 2011 deployment guide was released and you can grab it here. It has some nice configuration and customization features documented.
I also get asked what are the minimum Mac requirements for Communicator for Mac 2011 to work. I finally found that documented here:
Updated 5-24-11 with new Mango information
At TechEd 2011 this week, we demoed the beta of Lync Mobile for Windows Phone 7.x and Outlook Mobile in the upcoming Windows Phone “Mango” release. The Microsoft TechEd presenter commented Lync Mobile was slated for the 2nd half of 2011 and looks like it will be a free download from Marketplace. The beta version looks pretty nice thus far. Note:Here are some screenshots from the public demo shown at TechEd 2011 however features and UI are subject to change:
Lync Mobile beta
Lync mobile on the main Windows Phone 7 tiles with presence Launching Lync Mobile beta
Set your status, call forwarding Lync contacts with photos come across from full client, group IM also supported
Contact view, Photo support, IM Threaded Lync IM conversations
Mango Windows Phone 7.5 update of Outlook Mobile beta
Ability to drill into mail subfolders view filtered emails like ‘all unread’
Conversation view supported. Emails with three dots represent multiple threads. View right protected emails
What’s new with Mango release
Communications: Easier to connect and share
Internet beyond the browser
A smarter approach to Apps
Watch the demo video of Windows Phone Mango here.
These questions came from a school district in California replacing their entire legacy voicemail and PBX system with 2,000+ seats of OCS 2007 R2 voice. They are in pilot phase right now.
LG-Nortel IP8540 or Polycom CX700 (Tanjay) questions:
Can you dial 911 with a locked Tanjay phone? – Yes, you can dial any number you just can’t see contacts on the LCD.
Do you have to log in every morning with password and AD account? – No, your AD credentials and password should be cached and you can use the biometric reader to login. You will only have to enter a new password when it expires or is changed. You can also use the USB option and, new with R2, the phone will unlock when you login into the R2 Communicator client.
Can you control the Tanjay phone with the R2 Communicator softphone features (RCC)? – Yes, only via the USB connection however. You can click to call from Communicator or Outlook, answer toast pops from PC and have Tanjay pick up the call, add more parties to the call via Communicator client, etc., You can also log into Communicator client to unlock the phone (no pin or biometic needed).
Check the check box above inside of the Communicator client to have remote call control of the Tanjay.
Here is a summary of pairing the Tanjay with Communicator/Conferencing with OCS R2:
What version of Tanjay should we have to work with R2?
There is an updated Tanjay R2 version required to work properly: VERSION: 3.5.6907 (1.23)
Another other Tanjay fixes I should know about?:
You need to make you are deploying the latest OCS R2 communicator client VERSION 6907.34 (updated June 2009): – This update has some Tanjay fixes in them. Grab it here.
Can I ring more than one phone at once such as my whole department
Yes, with Team Ring feature in new in R2. You can ring up to 10 phones at the same time when your phone is called.
To enable:
Click ‘Phone’ icon in Communicator, then ‘Call Forwarding settings’. Select ‘Ring me and my team-call group’. Add in the numbers on your team you want to ring.
How do you setup calls for my administrative assistant?
The Call Delegation feature in R2 is for delegating your calls to administrative assistants, receptionists, etc. They will require the use of R2 Communicator Attendant to manage your calls, contacts, transfers, etc.
To enable Call Delegation:
Click Phone icon in Communicator, then Call Forwarding settings. Select ‘Ring me and my delegates’ drop down. Specify the delegates to ring.
Happy 4th of July everyone!
This was a question from a Northeastern school district:
Mac Messenger 7.0
Mac Messenger 7.0 is available for a Mac user to login into either Windows Live (MSN) or OCS 2007:
Login to either Windows Live or OCS 2007
Messenger 7.0 client is similar to OC client on PC with presence, groups, etc.
You can grab Mac Messenger 7.0.1 here.
Features of the Mac Messenger 7.0 client:
Mac Messenger 7.0 OS requirements:
Mac OS X version 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version of Mac OS
Communicator Web Access (CWA) with Macs:
We support Firefox and Safari browsers on the Mac connecting to OCS 2007. With the upcoming OCS 2007 R2 CWA, you can take it a step further on the Mac or Linux browsers where you can join a PC desktop sharing session and view and collaborate with their desktops. There may be plans to allow for Mac to host at some point in the future (always subject to change of course).
What about On-Prem OCS Live Meeting support?
Currently, there is no Mac support at this point but the alternative solution to this is to use the Communicator Web Access coming in R2 to join a shared desktop session. The other alternative option would be to leverage the Live Meeting Web Access, via a Mac browser, for the LM service in the cloud vs. with OCS. See my other blog here about the Live Meeting differences.
What are some of the differences with from the PC Office Communicator client, Communicator Web Access and the Mac Messenger 7.0 client? Here is a useful matrix:
This release of Lync is not just a minor upgrade from OCS 2007 R2. It has some awesome new features and functionality coming. I figured I should try and provide a bulleted list of the top features you need to be aware of. (screenshots are courtesy of Lync product team and some of my own)
•Contact Cards – these are available in all Office and SharePoint applications as well
•Unified Contact Store – no longer do you have contacts all over place
•Activity Feeds – similar to Facebook status feeds shows list of status changes, title changes, OOF, etc.
•Fast Search – quickly find people in your organization
•Skill Search – you can find ‘Nanotechnology expert’ on your campus for example
•Frequent Contacts – folks you communicate with the most are listed
•Conversation View – lists all the communications you have had in a single view (meetings, voice calls, IMs, etc)
Mac Office 2011 just Released To Manufacturing (RTM) last Friday. Watch their funny RTM video here. With that release comes a new Outlook 2011 Mac client and a new Communicator client for Mac.
New Outlook 2011 for Mac client
Showing the ability to read Exchange calendar, change presence and display calendar information in the contact card on the Mac.
Some of the Mac 2011 enhancements include:
Dialpad view
Voice call view on Mac 2011 client
•Single client – Live Meeting client is GONE!! All conferencing is provided natively in the Lync 2010 client.
•Join reliability – make it easier to join meetings from mobile phones and from meeting reminders
•PSTN conferencing features – will have DTMF controls, audio announcements, meeting lobby
•Rich conferencing experience – record meetings directly into WMV format, work on content in background during presentations
•Panoramic HD video – support for HD conferencing now, panoramic HD support as well
•Desktop & Application sharing – lightweight desktop sharing for faster rendering times – no more 2 second delays, etc.
•Reach client called Lync 2010 Attendee client – this is a Silverlight client for PCs (people joining from off campus), Macs and other platforms to consume meetings
•Infrastructure consolidation
•Video interop with Polycom, Radvision and Tandberg
Customers have been asking for this and there are plans to have Mac conferencing capabilities using a Silverlight Lync 2010 Attendee client client (web) for Mac users to start. Mac users can consume Lync meetings now. Additional conferencing functionality for Mac may be in the works post RTM. I will post more as more info comes available.
Some Mac Silverlight client conferencing features include:
View PC PowerPoints
View shared PC desktop
Remotely control PC desktop
Annotate PowerPoints, virtual laser pointer
Create and Post Polls, Vote in Polls
Create Whiteboard, collaborate in whiteboard
Can be combined with Mac 2011 Communicator client to include:
Audio conferencing
Video conferencing
•Dialpad
•Voicemail access – visual voicemail is very nice since you can play voicemails right in the client
•Private line – can setup one private line per voice enabled person
•Call delegation – can setup boss/admin and use Attendant Console for Admins/Receptionists
•Call routing – setup calls to go to another line forwarding or simulring (cell, home phone, etc)
•Call quality notification – lets you know if you are on a bad connection, echoing, speaking too loudly/softly, etc.
•Call park
•Device transfer – you can switch between multiple device real time during the call – headset, ip phone, usb phone, etc.
•Survivable branch appliance – appliance used for remote locations in case of a datacenter link outage/loss the SBA will leverage a PSTN connection for backup dialtone and failback to WAN link when available again. SBAs available from NET, Ferrari, HP, Audiocodes and Dialogic.
SBA diagram showing PSTN and WAN options
HP’s SBA appliance GUI screen
•Data center resiliency – can failover dialtone to alternate datacenters if primary datacenter goes down
•Call admission control (CAC) – can define bandwidth policies, audio and video routes, route traffic to Internet or PSTN based on links, etc.
•Announcement service – announce folks joining/leaving meetings
•Media bypass – no longer need mediation servers in remote locations for media nor are they needed for IP-PBX interop (for R2 voice customers today this translates to a huge reduction in Lync servers needed)
•E-911 for North America – native E911 location awareness See my post here for more info.
•Response group improvements
•Analog device support – fax machines and analog phones can be reflected in call detail records, etc.
•Standard and Enterprise Editions
•Reduced # of server roles – elimination for need of dedicated mediation server and other roles
•Server colocation enhancements
•Central Management Store – Lync config data stored in SQL now
•Planning Tool
•Topology Builder
•Migration tools
I will update more on the blog as things progress for Lync Mobile as far as available mobile platforms, final features, etc:
Features potentially slated (subject to change of course):
Single number reach - both ways (from Lync to mobile and from Mobile to Lync) where your mobile number stays hidden
Mobile voicemail avoidance – simul ring will send call to Exchange voicemail vs. mobile voicemail for example
Photos for each of your contacts
Join meeting – can join Lync conferences right from phone
See attendees in a Lync conference – along with who is talking
Control a Lync conference from mobile – mute, promote, remove, etc
Plenty of other mobile client features upcoming
•Lync Server Control Panel – core Lync administration capabilities from web page
•PowerShell – Lync Server can be fully managed from the command line if GUI is not your cup of tea
•Role Based Access Control – granular administration delegation down the property level if needed
•Server Draining – can drain calls before shutting down server for maintenance for example
•Virtualization Support – huge win here since now all the audio/video roles can be virtualized
•Enhanced monitoring – much better reporting and monitoring details, SCOM packs, etc.
Many more choices and variety of USB and IP phone pricepoints available now for Lync.
Some of the IP Lync phone device enhancements:
•Multi language support
•Contact Card – photos on the IP phone
•Search
•Call Transfer
•Calendar Integration – appointment will pop up and you can join the meeting right from the IP phone!
•Meeting Join
•Device management
New Lync phone views
Lync phone Calendar view
One of the big distinguishing points of the Lync platform is the ease of extensibility of our UC platform.
What comes with the UCMA 3.0 SDK (text excerpt from Chris Mayo’s UCMA FAQ):
Embed click to call/chat inside of LOB applications or Web sites using WPF or Silverlight
Extend apps inside of Lync client with context.
Grab the UCMA 3.0 RC SDK here.
Watch some of the new development Lync capabilities here.
Hopefully this gives you an idea of some of the amazing features coming with the Microsoft Lync Platform. Technet now has Lync 2010 content posted here for more technical deep dives. Stay tuned as we will have more posts around these topics upcoming.
Lync Server 2010 Licensing
ON PREMISE LICENSING:
Lync Server 2010 on-premises is licensed in the Server / Client Access License (CAL) model.
There are three types of licenses:
1) server licenses,
(2) client access licenses,
(3) external connector licenses.
Server Licenses
A license must be assigned for each instance of the server software that is being run.
The Lync Server 2010 is sold in two editions:
Client Access Licenses (CAL)
To access Lync Server 2010, a Client Access License, or CAL, is required. A CAL is not a software product; rather, it is a license that gives a user the right to access the services of the server.
There are three CALs for Lync:
Enterprise CALs and Plus CALs are additive-they are sold as a supplement to the Standard CAL. This means that to enable Standard CAL features for a user, the user must be licensed with just the Standard CAL. To use either the Enterprise CAL or the Plus CAL features, the user must be licensed with one (1) Standard CAL and either one (1) Enterprise CAL or one (1) Plus CAL.
To enable all features, a user must be licensed with all three CALs.
Finally, each CAL works with either the Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition of the Server.
Device and User CALs
For each Lync CAL, there are two types of CALs for purchase:
With the User CAL, you purchase a CAL for every authenticated user who accesses Lync Server 2010 features, regardless of the number of devices they use for that access. Purchasing a User CAL may make more sense if your users need to have roaming access to the corporate network using multiple devices, unknown devices, or more devices than users in your organization.
With a Device CAL, you purchase a CAL for every device that accesses Lync Server 2010 features, regardless of the number of authenticated users who use that device to access the server. Device CALs
may make more economic and administrative sense if your company has workers who share devices, for example, on different work shifts.
The decision between Device CAL and User CAL is financial, and you have the option to choose based on your needs. Additionally, in the case where neither the device nor the user is authenticated, a CAL is not required.
External Connector Licenses
If you want external users who are not your employees-such as business partners, external contractors, or other temporary staff-to be able to access your Lync Server 2010 as authenticated users, you have two licensing options:
An EC license is an alternative to CALs for each server that external users will access. An EC license assigned to a Lync Server 2010 permits access by any number of external users like Students. Each physical server that is accessed by external users requires only one EC license regardless of the number of instances running.
There are three External Connectors for Lync Server 2010:
The decision between CAL and EC is financial, and you have the option to choose based on your needs.
Client License
In order to access the functionality of Lync Server 2010 and have an authenticated experience, you need the Lync client application.
Lync has one client: Microsoft Lync 2010
You can purchase Lync 2010 as a standalone application or as part of the Office Professional Plus 2010 suite.
How to Deploy Lync Licenses On-premises
A server license is required for each physical or virtual instance of the Lync Server 2010 Front End Server Role (required with every Lync deployment). Both Standard and Enterprise editions can be installed and configured in many server roles on a server running Microsoft Windows Server®. Server roles are Lync Server 2010 instances which run a specialized set of functionality, such as audio/video conferencing, edge services, or mediation between Enterprise Voice and the PSTN.
Some roles are considered additional software and do not require a license. For these roles, you may run any number of instances directly with the Front End Server role.
Server Roles
Lync 2010 Server Standard and Enterprise editions can be installed and configured in many server roles on a server running Windows Server. Server roles are Lync Server 2010 instances which run a specialized set of functionality, such as audio/video conferencing, edge services, or mediation between Enterprise Voice and the PSTN.
The Front End Server role is required for every deployment, and each instance requires a license.
***Most Server roles are considered "additional software" and do not require a license.
For more on Lync Server 2010 Roles refer to TechNet. HERE
Server Role Descriptions:
Client Access Licenses
CALs are required for each user or device that will access instances of the Lync Server 2010 roles. Each server instance may provide different functionality to the user, and therefore not all servers in your Lync architecture/topology require a CAL.
For example, if you deployed the Lync Server 2010 Front End Role (required of any Lync deployment) and also deployed Lync Server 2010 in Web Conferencing Server Role, you would need the Lync Server 2010 Standard CAL for the rich IM and presence features, and the Lync Server 2010 Enterprise CAL for the online conference features. This example would not require the Plus CAL.
Figure 1 lists the CAL requirements for different server roles.
The feature details for server and CAL licensing are described in the Lync Server 2010 Feature Details section.
Licensing External Users
External users may require a license in order to access a Lync Server 2010. There are four types of external users that may access a Lync Server 2010:
Federated Users
A federated user is an external user that possesses valid credentials with a federated partner and is authenticated on that basis by Lync Server 2010. Federation is a feature provided with your licenses of Lync Server 2010. Users connected by federation with another partner do not require a CAL or External Connector License.
Unauthenticated Users
An unauthenticated, or anonymous, user is a person/device that does not have an identity in the Active Directory® Domain Services. Unlike a federated user, an anonymous user is not authenticated. You do not require licenses for unauthenticated users of Lync Server 2010.
External Authenticated Users
An EC license permits an unlimited number of authenticated external users to access a Lync Server 2010 in scenarios where the number of CALs is uncertain. The number of EC licenses required corresponds to the number of physical Lync Server 2010 servers, regardless of the number of instances. The specific EC required is determined by the equivalent CAL features the external users would require. The following lists available EC licenses and the equivalent CAL features:
Public Instant Messaging Users
Lync Server 2010 provides organizations with the capability to connect their existing base of Lync Server 2010-enabled users to the top public IM service providers. Licensing requirements for Public IM Connectivity depends on the service providers you want to connect with, and your Lync Server 2010 CALs.
Lync Server 2010 Feature Details
Standard Edition
A Standard Edition server is ideal for pilot and lab deployments or branch offices that do not have high availability and performance requirements. It is intended for deployments with fewer than 5,000 users either in total or at a particular location.
Enterprise Edition
An Enterprise Edition server has all of the Standard Edition server features; however it provides scalability and high availability. It is intended to allow an unlimited number of users in any location/configuration.
Comparison of Standard and Enterprise
See Figure 2 for summary features differences between Standard and Enterprise server versions.
Figure 2: Lync Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise Features
Prerequisites
Lync Server 2010 requires Windows Server® and Microsoft SQL Server® to run and may not include licenses for those products. Be sure you have the correct licenses for Windows Server and SQL Server.
Figure 3: Supported Windows Server and SQL Server Versions
Lync Server 2010 Client Access Licenses
Standard CAL
The Lync Server 2010 Standard CAL offers instant messaging and rich presence (IM/P) features. It provides users with real-time presence and enhanced IM along with PC-to-PC audio and video communications. Additionally it provides users with authenticated attendee experience for internally hosted conferences.
Enterprise CAL
The Lync Server 2010 Enterprise CAL offers the audio, video, and Web conferencing features. It provides users the ability to create, moderate, and join conferences for collaboration with both internal and external users.
Plus CAL
The Lync Server 2010 Plus CAL offers enterprise voice telephony features. It provides high-quality voice and other related features to users anywhere with an Internet connection across IP phones, PCs, and desktop applications.
New and Improved Features of the CALs
The following tables (Figures 4-6) provide a detailed feature breakdown for each Lync Server 2010 CAL.
Figure 4: Instant Messaging and Presence
Figure 5: Audio, Video, and Web Conferencing
Figure 6: Enterprise Voice Technology
Prerequisite CALs:
For each Lync Server 2010 CAL, there are other possible prerequisites for underlying Microsoft technologies-primarily dependent on the features you would like to utilize. The following Microsoft products may be required with Lync:
Licensing for Microsoft-hosted Lync Online
Lync offers the flexibility to license Lync Server 2010 for an on-premises deployment, or you may decide to work with a Microsoft-hosted service to give some or all of your Lync users access to the capabilities of the product.
This approach allows you to enjoy the benefits of enterprise-class communications in a pay-as-you-go model that enables you to scale up or down as needed, minimizing your financial risk.
How to Subscribe to Lync Online
Lync User Subscription Licenses
Rather than purchasing server licenses for each Server and user/device that uses Lync Server 2010, Lync Online is licensed via a subscription model in which each user needs a User Subscription License (USL).
Microsoft currently offers the following USLs for Lync Online:
Lync Online USL Features
The features offered in Lync online are similar to the features offered in Lync on-premises.
The following provides a high-level feature for each Lync Online USL:
updated – 3-16-11 with new information
What is Lync Group Chat?
What are some use case scenarios of Group Chat in education?
What are some new features of GC in Lync?
The first big change is the Lync GC client has be re-written to support Lync standards such as it leverages the Unified Communications Client Platform (UCCP) API and Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA) 3.0.
The look and feel are similar to GC in OCS R2 however there are some changes:
The Group Chat user interface and its accompanying icons, including its emoticons, have been upgraded and resized to match the Lync 2010 Group Chat user interface. Colors, notifications have been enhanced as well.
Can open multiple GC windows
Tweaks to the Ego filter such as:
The Ego filter no longer triggers whenever you type “IT”; for example, “Sara Davis (IT Dept)”. The text can be excluded only if the “bracket pair” in question is closed. For example:
Other enhancements include:
Unicode support – Support for Arabic, Chinese, and other UTF-8 languages
Client side logging disabled by default- to save disk space
Enhanced GC health monitoring via an SCOM management pack for the following:
Is federation still supported with Lync GC?
Yes, Lync GC can support partners, customers, students logging in from off-campus via the Internet.
Can I extend Lync GC into applications?
Yes, using the Lync GC SDK.
How does Lync Group Chat Server scale?
3 GC servers can handle 60,000 concurrent connections
What license do I need for Lync Group Chat?
Lync Standard CAL provides a license for Lync Group Chat.
Where do I get the Lync GC bits?
Grab the Lync Group Chat client here.
Grab the Lync Group Chat Server here. Note: a prereq to get GC working is Lync Server 2010 must be deployed first
Is there a web or mobile client for Lync GC?
Not out of the box however there is a nice add-on from Formicary that has Lync GC web browser support. They also have developed a mobile GC lync client and an Outlook GC add-in. View more here.
Formicary’s Browser based Lync group chat client works on any major browser (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome):
Formicary’s Silverlight based Lync group chat client:
Formicary’s GC mobile client for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile:
For more information around installing Lync Group Chat Server see here.
We have been tight lipped about R2 for some time now and it has been hard as we have been wanting to share all the R2 goodness coming in a few months. Finally, at VoiceCon today, we let the cat out of the bag.
Here is a highlight of some of the features coming in OCS 2007 Release 2 (Note: the screen shots I added here are beta and are subject to change):
Next-Generation Collaboration
•Dial-in audioconferencing. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 enables businesses to eliminate costly audioconferencing services with an on-premise audioconferencing bridge that is managed by IT as part of the overall communications infrastructure.
Internally at MS, the plan is to switch to OCS for our primary audio conferencing bridge with an estimated savings of over $4 million dollars per year.
•Desktop sharing. This feature enables users to seamlessly share their desktop, initiate audio communications and collaborate with others outside the organization on PC, Macintosh or Linux platforms through a Web-based interface.
This is accessed via Communicator Web Access where you hit this with your IE, Safari,or Firefox browser across platforms.
•Persistent group chat. This enables geographically dispersed teams to collaborate with each other by participating in topic-based discussions that persist over time. This application provides users with a list of all available chat rooms and topics, periodically archives discussions in an XML file format that meets compliance regulations, provides tools to search the entire history of discussion on a given topic, and offers filters and alerts to notify someone of new posts or topics on a particular topic.
This comes from our Parlano acquisition and has already gained a lot of interest in the schools I have demoed this to. I setup various chat channels such as the Engineering Channel, the Economics Channel, IT support channel, the sky is the limit with what you could do with your school here.
Enhanced Voice and Mobility
•Attendant console and delegation. This allows receptionists, team secretaries and others to manage calls and conferences on behalf of other users, set up workflows to route calls, and manage higher volumes of incoming communications through a software-based interface.
This replaces the Communicator Client for a receptionist, administrative assistant they can perform blind transfers, consultative transfers, import their bosses contacts, pre-stage recurring audio meetings, etc.
•Session Initiation Protocol trunking. This feature enables businesses to reduce costs by setting up a direct VoIP connection between an Internet telephony service provider and Office Communicator 2007 without requiring on-premise gateways.
I can see a lot of interest here since you can save quite a bit by using Direct SIP vs. using on-premise hardware such as a Session Border Controller. We are working as part of the SIPConnect working group to ensure there is fully interoperability with OCS.
•Response group.A workflow design application manages incoming calls based on user-configured rules (e.g., round-robin, longest idle, simultaneous), providing a simple-to-use basic engine for call treatment, routing and queuing.
This can be used for simple call group queuing/routing such as a departmental IT group it also has hold music, autoattendant speech recognition such as “Say ‘Printers’ for Printer support” and the recipient will receive an inbound call with a contextual reference such as “Printer help”.
•Mobility and single-number reach. This extends Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile functionality to Nokia S40, Motorola RAZR, Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms, allowing users to communicate using presence, IM and voice as an extension of their PBX from a unified client.
New Developer Tools for Business Applications
•APIs and Visual Studio integration. This improves the efficiency of everyday business processes by enabling businesses to build communications-enabled applications and embed communications into business applications.
You can setup UC call flows with Visual studio 2008 and leverage an SDK for Speech server.
The worldwide launch of OCS 2007 R2 is February 3rd and you can sign up for the launch here:
http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver
There will be plenty more R2 information coming from the product team as well as in our blog around things like moving to R2 from RTM OCS, the new 64-bit requirement, etc. Stay tuned!
Is there any reduction in IOPS?
Yes, another huge 70% reduction in IOPS with Exchange Server 2010. This is on top of the 70% IOPS reduction from Exchange Server 2007.
What does this mean for my storage requirements?
The Exchange 2007 IOPS reduction meant you could leverage Direct Attach SAS disk storage cabinets vs. traditional SAN for Exchange 2003.
With the additional Exchange Server 2010 IOPS reduction, this means you can deploy even a lower cost storage solution such as Direct Attach with SATA disks and still maintain excellent performance.
If you begin to use some of the triple database replication copy scenarios for database high availability, you could even begin to use JBOD SATA (RAID-less) storage.
The idea behind this logic is since you are maintaining 3+ copies of your database spread over multiple JBOD SATA disks the value of using RAID disk sets adds little value or unnecessary additional performance.
Are there true cost savings with using DAS SATA or JBOD SATA?
With the samples below, you can see with a 2GB mailbox using DAS with SATA drives you can drop the server/storage capex by 38% vs. DAS with SAS drives!
Here is a sample with High availability, you can see a 75% reduction in capex vs. Exchange 2007 when using Database Access Groups (new term for Exchange 2010 high availability) with JBOD SATA storage.
Note: These are preliminary performance and cost figures, and more detailed information will be available when Exchange 2010 launches.
This question was asked by a college based out of Florida looking to deploy Lync for their 1500 faculty and staff. They had redundant WAN links and wanted to determine what a SBA provides. Screenshots from Lync product team.
If I have redundant WAN links, what benefits does a SBA provide for my branch offices?
An SBA provides the following benefits:
What are my Branch Office options for Lync Server?
You have three recommended options available to you.The first is no SBA for 25 users or less. The second is an SBA for 26-1000 users and the third option for 1001-5000 users is a Survivable Branch Server or Lync Std Edition Server with a Media Gateway. For remote sites with more than 5000 users it is recommended to deploy a full Lync infrastructure with a separate pool.
The idea here is you could use WAN as your primary and have a fallback for PSTN for high availability. For the small branch scenario, some UC phones allow for dual registration where you could fall back to an alternate VOIP provider is need be.
Does an SBA provide inbound and outbound dialing during a WAN failure?
End user experience when using failover to PSTN.
The answer is yes. Here are the features that work during resiliency mode in the branch office:
What are the Lync features which don’t working during a WAN outage in the branch office?
Who are the SBA partners available for Lync Server 2010?
How do I deploy a SBA?
I put together a summary of the required steps. For more specific details visit here.
How can I provide redundant Response Group Service with Lync if my primary datacenter fails?
If you stretch your Lync pool across datacenters you can accommodate this.