The 30 interesting info about Lync

In this post I’ll list to you 30 fact and info about Lync which is totally new and different than OCS:

1. You can virtualize all topologies and we support all workloads, including Enterprise Voice to be virtualized
2. When you virtualize, Scalability is roughly 50% of the scalability offered by a Lync Server 2010 topology running only on physical servers
3. In Microsoft Lync Server 2010, A/V Conferencing service functionality, which normally runs on the Front End Server, can also run in a standalone server role called A/V Conferencing Server
4. If your site has more than 10,000 users, we recommend that you deploy a separate A/V Conferencing pool
5. Lync introduced ‘Survivable Branch Appliance’, which is a new device introduced in Lync Server 2010 that combines a PSTN gateway with a Lync Server Registrar and Mediation Server. This appliance is targeting branch offices who require telephony services in case of WAN failures with the central site
6. In the event a branch office’s WAN connection to a data center fails, the Survivable Branch Appliance provides the following voice features to users in that branch office:
   1. PSTN inbound and outbound calls
   2. Intra-site and inter-site calls
   3. Call hold, retrieve, and transfer
   4. User authentication and authorization
   5. Leaving and retrieving voicemail
   6. Call forwarding, simultaneous ringing, boss-administrator, and team calling
   7. Call Detail Recording (CDR).
   8. All two-party functionality, including instant messaging and audio-video conferencing
   9. PSTN dial-in conferencing with Conferencing Auto-Attendant
7. In Lync Server 2010, the Director is now a unique server role which you cannot home users on it
8. A Director is not designated as either a Standard Edition server or an Enterprise Edition server; it does not require any type of Microsoft Lync Server 2010 license (interesting huh)
9. Collocation of mediation with FE is recommended if you are not using SIP trunking or Direct SIP
10. New to Lync is the ‘Topology Builder’ which is a wizard-driven user interface that you use to create and edit your Microsoft Lync Server 2010 topology
11. With Microsoft Lync Server 2010, configuration data about servers and services is moved to the Central Management store. Read-only copies of the data are replicated to all servers in the topology, including Edge Servers and survivable branch appliances
12. Although most of the Lync configuration is stored in the central management store, the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) are still used to store basic Lync Server user information, such as the user’s SIP URI and phone number
13. The Lync Server 2010 Management Shell is a new method of administration and management
14. Lync introduces role-based access control (RBAC). Lync Server 2010 includes 11 predefined roles that cover many common administrative tasks
15. Administration console is no longer using MMC, Lync Server Control Panel replaces the MMC administrative interfaces of previous releases
16. Microsoft Lync Server 2010 introduces DNS load balancing for load balancing for SIP and media traffic (you will still need hardware LB for other traffic such as HTTP however this is the easiest part in configuring a HW load balancer)
17. DNS load balancing is supported for Front End pools, Edge Server pools, Mediation Server pools, and Director pools
18. Microsoft Lync 2010 Attendee is a new downloadable client that enables users without Microsoft Lync 2010 to attend meetings
19. You manage Edge Servers from the internal network. All configuration data for servers and services resides in the Central Management database, which you can manage by using internal administrative tools
20. Lync Server 2010 introduces support for integration with hosted Exchange UM
21. Lync supports Enhanced 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) as part of your Enterprise Voice deployment
22. New for the Mediation Server in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 is the ability for a single Mediation Server to route outbound calls through multiple gateways
23. Also new for Lync Server 2010 is the ability for a Mediation Server to be deployed as a pool; this pool can be collocated with the Front End pool, or can be a standalone pool
24. Malicious call tracing enables users to flag incoming calls which are harassing, threatening, or obscene. Immediately after hanging up, the user can select an option to report the call as malicious. If they do so, a trace request is sent to mark the record of the call, and an event is logged
25. Lync introduced the concept of ‘Anonymous call’ in the Response Group feature, when a response group is so configured, agents can accept incoming and make outgoing calls on behalf of the response group without revealing their identity (Anonymous call). Anonymous calls do not support conferencing, application sharing and desktop sharing, file transfer, whiteboarding and data collaboration, or call recording
26. Archiving policy settings for both IM and meetings are unified. The core archiving store contains both IM content and Web conferencing attendee entries and exits consolidated together
27. You can do searchable transcript of archived information without the need for scripts
28. In Microsoft Lync Server 2010, the Group Policy settings used in previous  Office Communications Server releases are now controlled by in-band provisioning client policies that are server-based.
29. Lync 2010 clients can now receive updated software from Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) or Microsoft Update instead of from a location hosted on Lync Server 2010
30. Lync Server 2010 provides support for analog devices. Specifically, the supported analog devices are analog audio phone and analog fax machines. Now you can configure the analog gateways and devices in your organization to use Lync Server 2010. After you do this, analog devices use Lync Server to make and receive calls, and Lync Server makes routing decisions and log calls in call detail records (CDRs) for analog devices, just as it does for any device

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi Keith, The Merge-CsLegacyTopology command enables you to migrate configuration settings from a previous version of Office Communications Server to Lync, Merge-CsLegacyTopology should be used in conjunction with the Import-CsLegacyConfiguration and Import-CsLegacyConferenceDirectory cmdlets... I'll try to see if there is more detailed document about it.

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Keith, Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software supports virtualization topologies that support all major workloads—instant messaging (IM) and presence, conferencing, and Enterprise Voice. Windows Server 2008 R2 is required, and both Microsoft Hyper-V technology and VMware are supported. The supported topologies are as follows: • Lync Server 2010 Standard Edition server topology, supporting up to 2,000 users, for proof-of-concept, pilot projects, and small businesses that do not need remote connectivity. This topology includes a physical host server running one virtualized Lync Server 2010 Standard Edition server. You can also deploy an Edge Server (either physical or virtual). You may also deploy Monitoring Server and/or Archiving Server on a physical server. Other server roles are not supported in this topology. The user capacity for a single virtualized Standard Edition server is 2,000 users. You can add more user capacity by adding more virtualized Standard Edition servers. If you do so, each virtualized server must run on a separate physical host server. • Data center topology, supporting up to 40,000 users. You can read the full details in the "Planning for Other Features in Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (Release Candidate)" document

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi Jonathan, The below is from the Planning for EV Lync RC... To enable voice mail survivability for branch site users, the following configurations are recommended:

• An Exchange administrator should configure Exchange UM Auto Attendant (AA) to Message Taking Mode. This is a special type of AA that disables all other generic functionality, such as transfer to a user or transfer to an operator, and limits the AA to only accept messages. Alternatively, the Exchange administrator may choose to use a generic AA, or an AA customized to route the call to an operator.
• The Lync Server administrator should set the AA phone number as the Exchange UM Auto Attendant phone number when configuring voice mail rerouting for either the Survivable Branch Appliance or branch server.
• The Lync Server administrator should set the Exchange UM subscriber access number that corresponds to the branch user’s Exchange UM dial plan as the Exchange UM subscriber access number when configuring voice mail rerouting on the Survivable Branch Appliance.
• The Exchange administrator should configure Exchange UM so that only one dial plan is associated with all branch users who need access to voicemail during a WAN outage.

• Anonymous
  September 18, 2010
  Great list!! I'll borrow it to my Swedish blog (www.DiverseTips.se). I also liked your posts about deploying an Lab environment off Lync server

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2010
  Excellent list! Of interest will be the ability to fully virtualise all of the Lync workloads. Yeah!

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2010
  Is it true that only Enterprise Edition will be supported if virtualized, or can you virtualize Standard Edition and be supported?

• Anonymous
  September 20, 2010
  Hi Thanks for the info. Is there any documentation on using the Merge-CsLegacyTopology command, or the Merge 2007 R2 Topology wizard in the Topology Builder? We are trying to move users from a 2007 R2 environment to a new Lync Environment,

• Anonymous
  September 21, 2010
  Hi, Great article, I have a question regarding the SBA feature : Leaving voicemail : I'm interested in exactly how this feature will behave. The SBA will re-route the call for voicemail via the PSTN to the ExUM OVA numbers I assume? This will mean the caller will be presented with the default auto-attendant, as the calling coming into ExUM won't have a diverted number associated to it (PSTN doesn't support passing divert headers). So the caller would need to provide the name or number of the person they called again to the ExUM Autoattendant? regards Jonathan

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2010
  Hi, Thanks for the info. Is there any documentation about integration with Cisco CUCM and/or Avaya ACM ? Thanks Franco

• Anonymous
  November 12, 2010
  How do I setup basic IM functionality to MSN? I have completed the provisioning request with Microsoft but cannot IM either way

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2016
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