Enterprise Edition Topology

Enterprise Edition Topology

This topic applies to Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) Enterprise Edition only.

MSS Enterprise Edition employs a distributed server topology that consists of Speech Engine Services (SES) and Telephony Application Services (TAS) installed on multiple computers. TAS is required if your system will be supporting telephony (voice-only) applications. TAS requires a telephony card and associated telephony interface manager (TIM) software for each TAS computer.

In addition, one or more Web server computers running Internet Information Services (IIS) and ASP.NET are required for all MSS Enterprise Edition (distributed) topologies.

Load balancing is also required if installing SES, TAS, or Web server software on multiple computers in a server farm or cluster configuration. For more information, see Load Balancing and Availability.

Note  The placement of a firewall between a SES computer and a TAS computer, or between a SES computer and a client computer running Speech Add-in for Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer, is not supported.

There are three major distributed server topologies: Dual Server; Distributed SES; and Distributed SES and TAS.

Dual Server Topology

A dual server topology consists of:

  • SES installed on one computer

  • TAS installed on a separate computer

  • Software for TIM and the associated telephony card required for TAS

  • A Web server running IIS and ASP.NET installed on a separate computer

In this deployment, load balancing is not needed because only a single instance each of TAS and SES are running.

The following diagram shows the physical topology of a dual server deployment:

Dual server topology diagram

Distributed SES Topology

A distributed server topology for SES consists of:

  • SES installed on multiple computers

  • TAS installed on a single computer or not at all

  • If TAS is used, software for TIM and associated telephony card are required

  • One or more Web servers running IIS and ASP.NET

SES computers and Web servers require load balancing.

The following diagram shows the physical topology of a distributed SES server deployment:

Distributed SES topology

Distributed SES and TAS Topology

A distributed server topology for SES and TAS consists of:

  • SES installed on multiple computers

  • TAS installed on multiple computers

  • Software for TIM and associated telephony card for each computer running TAS

  • One or more Web servers running IIS and ASP.NET

Computers running SES and TAS, as well as Web servers, require load balancing. A Private Branch Exchange (PBX) unit provides call routing and load balancing for TAS.

The following diagram shows the physical topology of a distributed SES/TAS server deployment:

Distributed SES/TAS topology