Lync Server Top to Bottom, Big to Small

@justimorris

http://www.justin-morris.net

justimorris@outlook.com

Justin MorrisLync MVPSenior Consultant – Modality Systems

10/04/2023 Microsoft Unified Communications User Group London (MUCUGL) 2

What I’ll Cover

• Introduction• Understanding Capacity Planning• Design Examples – Small to Large• Interesting and Unusual Deployments• Architecting for Large Meetings• Key Takeaways

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Introduction

• Gathering business requirements drives these architecture decisions.

• High availability and capacity are generally the biggest drivers.

• Right-sizing all parts of the environment is important.

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Understanding Capacity Planning

• Standard Edition still has 5,000 user capacity• Planning for Pool Pairing impacts capacity planning

for SE• 2x SE servers paired = 2,500 users per server

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Understanding Capacity Planning

• One Enterprise Edition Front End server can host 6,600 users

• Maximum number of users in a Front End pool is 80,000

• Maximum number of Front End Servers in a pool is 12

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Understanding Capacity Planning

• One Edge Server and/or Director Server per 12,000 remote users

• Conferencing capacity per pool is based on 5% of the user pop being in a conference at any one time

• Maximum conference size is 250 participants

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Understanding Capacity Planning

• Don’t forget voice capacity planning!• How many ISDN circuits do you need to support?• How many gateways/SBCs do you need?• How many channels do you need on your SIP

trunks (both to PSTN and legacy PBX)?

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Design Example – 1000 users

• Standard Edition• Single site or

multiple site?• In-site or cross-

site DR? Very hard to provide both with pool pairing

London Data Centre

Lync Server 2013 Standard Edition

Server 1

SIP/TLS (5061)

HTTPS (443)

SIP/TCP (5060)

DMZ LANINTERNET

Reverse Proxy

EDGE1

EDGE2

Federated Partners & External Users

Sonus SBC 1000 x2PSTN

Reverse Proxy

Office Web Apps Server 1

Lync Server 2013 Standard Edition

Server 2

Backup Service

SQL1

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Design Example – 5000 users

• Enterprise Edition – 3x Front Ends with SQL Backend Mirroring

• Recommended minimum is 3 FEs for any EE pool

• Overspecced, but too many users for Standard Edition

Local Storage Local Storage

SQL Mirroring

Principal Mirror

Witness

Lync 2013 Front End Pool

Lync FE1

Lync FE2

Lync FE3

PChat 1 WAC 1

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Design Example – 25,000 users

• Enterprise Edition – 5x FE

• Provides 1+1 redundancy

• Pool pairing? Scope a second pool with the same # of FEs

Local Storage Local Storage

SQL Mirroring

Principal Mirror

Witness

Lync 2013 Front End Pool

Lync FE1

Lync FE2

Lync FE3

PChat 2 WAC 1

Lync FE4

Lync FE5

PChat 1 WAC 2

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Design Example – 100,000 users• 2x Enterprise

Edition pools• 66k user capacity

per pool• Location of pools

depends on location of users

• Provides 1+1 redundancy

Local Storage Local Storage

SQL Mirroring

Principal Mirror

Witness

Lync 2013 Front End Pool 1

Lync FE6

Lync FE7

Lync FE8

PChat 2 WAC 1

Lync FE9

Lync FE5

PChat 1 WAC 2

Local Storage Local Storage

SQL Mirroring

Principal Mirror

Witness

Lync 2013 Front End Pool 2

Lync FE6

Lync FE7

Lync FE8

PChat 2 WAC 1

Lync FE9

Lync FE10

PChat 1 WAC 2

Lync FE1

Lync FE2

Lync FE3

Lync FE4

Lync FE1

Lync FE2

Lync FE3

Lync FE4

Lync FE10

Lync FE5

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Interesting and Unusual Deployments

• True Global Deployment – FE pool in London, SEs in New York, Singapore and Sydney. 20+ SBAs scattered around the globe

• 15k+ user deployment with resiliency within and across data centres

DC1

50% of users

Local Storage Local Storage

SQL Mirroring

Principal Mirror

Witness

DC2

50% of users

Local Storage Local Storage

SQL Mirroring

Principal Mirror

Witness

Pool Pairing

Lync 2013 Front End Pool 1

Lync FE1

Lync FE2

Lync FE3

Lync 2013 Front End Pool 2

Lync FE1

Lync FE2

Lync FE3

Lync 2013 Persistent Chat Pool

Office Web Apps Farm

Lync 2013 Director Pool

SIP/TLS (5061)

SQL

SMB

File Share

File Share

Lync 2013 Mediation Server Pool

PChat 1 PChat 2

WAC 1 WAC 2

MED 1 MED 2 MED 3 MED 4

SBC 1 SBC 2 SBC 3 SBC 4

Existing Sonus SBC 2000 Platform

UM 1

UM 2

UM 3

UM 4

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Architecting for Large Meetings

• 1000 participant meetings require a dedicated Front End pool

• One, single conference at a time• Minimum of 1 FE required, HA is up to you• Best practice is to create a special user account in

this pool to be used only to host large meetings

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Key Takeaways

• Understand capacity and feature requirements early to enable you to plan the architecture

• Balance capacity and availability requirements• Right-size every piece of the environment, not just

the Front End pool• At the very least, optimise architecture for voice

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Questions?