Johann's Unified Communications : whitepaper

OCS R2 Site Resiliency

jkruse — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:55:00 GMT

Using backup and restoration procedures for site disaster recovery as described in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 documentation library topic Backup and Restoration, can entail some downtime for users.

This white paper describes a site resiliency solution for Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The solution includes an Enterprise pool that spans two geographically separate sites. The solution provides a failover mechanism between the two sites to ensure that Office Communications Server functionality such as instant messaging, presence, and conferencing remains available even if one of the sites becomes unavailable.

This white paper is divided into three main sections:

The Solution section provides an overview of the tested and supported site resiliency solution described in this paper.
The Test Methodology section describes the testing topology, expected behavior, and test results.
The Findings and Recommendations section provides practical guidance for deploying your own failover solution.

To successfully follow this paper, you should have a thorough understanding of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering.

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c930febb-3a44-4bf3-969d-1c52675a7063

Determining the Scalability of Combined CAS and Hub Roles in Exchange 2007

jkruse — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:24:33 GMT

Bill Thompson has written a great whitepaper on considerations for Exchange 2007 servers running both the CAS and Hub roles.

This white paper provides information about the scalability of computers running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with the Client Access server role and the Hub Transport server role installed on the same server. It also provides planning guidance to help you select the appropriate hardware platform(s) for an Exchange 2007 deployment where you are deploying the Client Access and Hub Transport server roles on the same computer.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd901772.aspx

OCS 2007 R2 Virtualisation Support

jkruse — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:15:02 GMT

We are pleased to announce official support for server virtualisation for Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

We are introducing support for both a fully distributed virtualised topology across several hypervisors and for a single server virtualised topology. These topologies are supported on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and any Server Virtualisation Validation Program (SVVP) certified partner solution (http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm).

Presence, Instant Messaging (including remote access, federation, and Public IM Connectivity) and Group Chat workloads are supported. The following server roles can be deployed:

Front-End Servers
Back-End SQL Server 2008 64 bits
Group Chat Channel Servers
Group Chat Compliance Servers
Archiving Servers
Monitoring (CDR only) Servers
Edge Access Servers

The virtual machines must be running on Windows Server 2008 64-bit. Archiving Server and Monitoring Server can be connected to a virtualised Enterprise pool, but they must run on a physical server. The fully virtualised distributed topology has been tested to handle up to 40,000 users, including 10,000 group chat users.

Virtualisation of the other workloads is not supported because of possible quality issues with real-time media.

Specifically, voice, video, live meeting and desktop sharing workloads cannot be part of the virtualised deployment. Therefore audio/video/web conferencing servers, audio/video/web edge conferencing servers, dial-in conferencing, Communicator Web Access, enterprise voice, or Remote Call Control may not be deployed as part of the virtualised pool.

If any one of these workloads is required, a new pool with physical servers must be deployed for those users. For more information about support for client virtualisation technologies, please refer to the official support statement at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951152.

In order to plan both their physical and virtualised topologies, customers can use Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool, which can simulate user load for the available workloads. This will help customers validating the hypervisor load and scalability before going to production.

For more information there is a whitepaper available for download: “Running Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a Virtualized Topology” - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a45d921-3b48-44e4-b42b-19704a2b81b0&displaylang=en

This document describes the results of a series of configurations that were run in a Hyper-V environment to validate that Office Communications Server on Hyper-V provides stable performance and scalability for production use.

The support statement at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd572860(office.13).aspx will be updated in the next few days to reflect this.

Integrating Telephony with OCS R2

jkruse — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:10:47 GMT

Updated for OCS 2007 R2, this white paper covers everything you want to know about Voice Interoperability with OCS. Topics include Media Gateways, IP-PBXs, SIP Trunking, PBX integration Scenarios, Standards Compliance, Integration Features and Migration Strategies.

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=8CDE0C3A-042E-445B-A514-2D12ED5B2AC2&displaylang=en

Do You Really Need A SAN Anymore?

jkruse — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:46:00 GMT

I have had many interesting conversations about my post on Advantages of DAS over SAN storage in Exchange 2007 and the related session I delivered at Tech.Ed 2008… many sceptics have seen the light, although some remain sceptical.

It’s interesting to see that Forrester have published a paper titled “Do You Really Need A SAN Anymore?”.

An excerpt from the paper…

It's been the conventional wisdom of the past 10 years that to provide the best performance, protection, and capacity utilization for applications and databases, you need a robust storage array in a storage area network (SAN). But with low capacity utilization, the inability to prioritize application performance, long provisioning times, and soaring costs, SANs haven't lived up to their promise. SANs also leave application, database, and system administrators at the mercy of storage administrators for all their storage-related needs, such as capacity, data copies, and backups. To regain control and get better results, application vendors are starting to subsume more storage functionality into the application itself, giving IT buyers the option to spend less on commodity storage and get their high-value features from the application. The time has come for buyers to question the value of their SAN and consider simpler options that fit better with the applications they truly care about.

A very interesting read on allowing advanced applications (e.g. Exchange) look after storage. Unfortunately it’s not free, but you can purchase and read the paper at http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,47089,00.html

OCS 2007 Video-conferencing Interoperability White Paper

jkruse — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:11:52 GMT

Office Communications Server 2007 is the first Microsoft product to combine enterprise-ready IM, presence, video-conferencing, web-conferencing, and VoIP telephony in one solution. In addition, OCS 2007 includes real-time videoconferencing solutions running on servers in your intranet or interoperating with video-conferencing hardware vendors such as TANDBERG or Polycom.

Providing interoperability between Office Communications Server 2007 and video-conferencing vendors allows you to take advantage of your existing video-conferencing hardware investment while extending video-conferencing features to other users with minimal hardware investment and user training. The users that attend conferences using dedicated video-conferencing hardware can schedule meetings and determine attendee availability using familiar tools, such as Microsoft Office Outlook or Office Communicator 2007.

Download the whitepaper and get more info at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ocs/cc836454.aspx

Designing Your Perimeter Network for Office Communications Server 2007 White Paper

jkruse — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:12:37 GMT

This paper answers questions about Office Communications Server 2007 with specific regard to its integration into the perimeter network (also known as DMZ, demilitarized zone, or screened subnet).

The first section, “Commonly Asked Questions,” answers key design questions from customers about the initial stages of product deployment.

The second section, “Architecture and Networking Best Practices,” explores ways to prepare for the edge servers in the perimeter network, taking into consideration issues of physical deployment, ways to ensure a publicly routable IP address, firewall configuration, and load-balancing concerns.

Download the whitepaper at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E4A8D703-E41A-47D9-B9DD-2799F894AF92&displaylang=en

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