Virtualization Support

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.

Topic Last Modified: 2016-12-01

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 supports virtualization for some server roles and features. Presence, instant messaging (IM) (including remote access, federation, and public IM connectivity), and Group Chat workloads are supported. The following server roles can be deployed in a virtualized topology: Front End Servers, Back-End Databases running 64-bit editions of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Group Chat Channel Servers, Group Chat Compliance Servers, and Edge Servers. Archiving Servers and Monitoring Servers (CDR only) can be connected to a virtualized Enterprise pool, but they must run on a physical server.

The guest operating systems running on the virtualized server must be the 64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 does not support Windows Server 2003 as a guest operating system. The fully virtualized distributed topology was tested to handle up to 40,000 users, including 10,000 Group Chat users.

Virtualization of other workloads is not supported. Specifically, voice, video, Live Meeting, and application sharing workloads cannot be part of the virtualized deployment, even for client-to-client communications. Therefore, A/V Conferencing Servers, Web Conferencing Servers, Edge Servers running the A/V Edge service or the Web Conferencing Edge service, dial-in conferencing, Communicator Web Access, Enterprise Voice, and Remote Call Control cannot be deployed as part of the virtualized pool. If you require any of these workloads, you must deploy a new pool with physical servers for those users.

In a virtualized deployment, all the supported workloads must be virtualized. In general, you cannot mix virtualized and physical servers. For example, you cannot deploy Group Chat on a virtualized server with a pool that runs on physical servers, nor can you deploy Group Chat on a physical server with a pool that runs on virtualized servers. As another example, you cannot deploy a back-end database on a virtualized server with a Front End that runs on a physical server. However, the exception to this rule is that you can deploy an Enterprise pool back-end database on a physical server with a Front End pool that runs on a virtualized server, and you can deploy a Group Chat back-end database on a physical server with one or more Group Chat Channel Servers that run on a virtualized server.

You can deploy Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a virtualized topology by using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or any other virtualization solution that is certified through the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). For details about SVVP, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151499.

You can deploy Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a distributed multiple server virtualized topology or in a single server virtualized topology.

For details about server roles, features, and workloads that can be virtualized, see the white paper "Running Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a Virtualized Topology" available at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=151594.