Group Chat Architecture
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will reach end of support on January 9, 2018. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.
Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat enables users to engage in persistent, ongoing IM conversations. For details about Group Chat features, see New Group Chat Feature.
The minimum configuration and simplest deployment for Group Chat is a single-server topology, which includes the following computers:
A single Group Chat Server running the following three server roles:
Lookup service. The Lookup service provides the chat room address, distributes sessions to Channel Servers, and in multiple-server topologies manages load balancing.
Channel service. The Channel service provides core functionality for Chat Rooms, except for file posting, which is managed through the Web Service.
Web service. The Web service is used to post files to group channels. Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0 hosts the Web service.
A computer hosting the Microsoft SQL Server database for storing ongoing and archival chat data, as well as information about categories and channels that are created, user provisioning information from the Group Chat Administration Tool and initial sign-in, and basic configuration information about the Group Chat Servers.
Group Chat client computers. These computers are not required to be 64-bit.
If compliance is required, the single-server topology must also include the following:
Compliance service. If configured, the Group Chat compliance feature archives a comprehensive record of both logged and unlogged group chat activity. IM content is not archived unless archiving is configured in Office Communications Server. In this case, IM content is archived on the Archiving Server.
SQL Server Database. This database can be either the Group Chat database or a separate database on the Compliance Server.
The following figure shows all of the components of a topology with a single Group Chat Server and optional Compliance Server with a separate compliance database.
Figure 1. Single-server Group Chat toplology
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The following figure shows a multiple-server Group Chat topology.
Figure 2. Multiple-server Group Chat topology
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Administration of Group Chat from a separate computer (such as an administrative console) requires installation of the following on the computer:
- Group Chat Administration Tool
All of these computers must be deployed:
In an Active Directory domain, with at least one global catalog server in the forest root.
Outside the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 pool.