Introduction to the Office Communications Server Planning Guide
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.
Welcome to the Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 Planning Guide. This guide describes how to plan a smooth, successful Office Communications Server 2007 deployment for organizations of all sizes and levels of complexity, from large, geographically dispersed global enterprises to small, local businesses.
Planning is essential to successful deployment. The new Office Communications Server 2007 deployment tool, combined with new wizards for many of the more common tasks, such as configuring pools and obtaining certificates, greatly simplifies the process of installing, configuring, and activating Office Communications Server 2007. But the deployment tool and wizards do not take the place of planning; they simply make carrying out your plans easier.
This guide divides the planning process into 12 steps. Some steps are essential for all deployments; others are more important for some environments than for others; but all should be reviewed before actual deployment begins. These steps are summarized in this topic.
Important
This guide presents guidance and topologies specifically for Office Communications Server 2007. If you are migrating from Live Communications Server 2005, use this guide in conjunction with the Migrating to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 document.
Step 1. Determine Key Planning Decisions
Discusses the main decision points you need to consider before selecting a topology.
Step 2. Select Your Topology
Presents several sample deployments based on size and desired functionality. These topologies are intended to guide you through the possible options available when you plan your deployment.
Step 3. Plan Your Deployment Path
Summarizes important things you need to know before you begin any Office Communications Server deployment and provides an overview of the deployment process.
Step 4. Prepare Your Infrastructure
Discusses requirements for Active Directory® Domain Services, certificates, DNS, automatic client sign-in, and ports.
Step 5. Review System and Network Requirements
Lists hardware and software requirements for Office Communications Server 2007 server roles and clients.
Step 6. Plan for External User Access
Provides guidelines for deploying Office Communications Server 2007 in your perimeter network for the purpose of supporting messaging, presence, and conferencing with users connecting from outside your organization firewall.
Step 7. Plan for Deploying Load Balancers
Examines hardware load balancer requirements and configurations for an Enterprise pool. Also discusses the advantages of using hardware load balancers with edge server arrays.
Step 8. Plan for VoIP
Discusses all the factors, requirements, and configuration tasks that you need to consider in order to deploy Microsoft’s software-powered VoIP solution.
Step 9. Plan for Address Book Server
Discusses requirements for supporting the Address Book Server, including IIS (Internet Information Services), network file share, and required disk space.
Step 10. Plan for High Availability and Fault Tolerance
Provides guidelines for assuring high availability and describes Office Communications Server 2007 features for optimizing availability and fault tolerance.
Step 11. Plan for Database Storage
Discusses storage requirements for the various databases and file shares that are required by Office Communications Server 2007, including storage requirements for Archiving and CDR (Call Detail Records) database and new messaging support for rich text format. Also discusses RAID (DAS), NAS, and SAN tradeoffs, as well as basic calculations of disk space needed per meeting and per pool, based on numbers of users.
Step 12. Plan for Compliance and Usage
Describes how to meet compliance requirements for archiving and call data recording.