New Central Management Store

Topic Last Modified: 2011-05-04

With Microsoft Lync Server 2010, configuration data about servers and services is moved to the Central Management store. The Central Management store provides a more robust, schematized storage of the data needed to define, set up, maintain, administer, describe, and operate a Lync Server 2010 deployment. It also validates the data to ensure configuration consistency.

All changes to this configuration data happen at the Central Management store, eliminating “out-of-sync” issues. Read-only copies of the data are replicated to all servers in the topology, including Edge Servers and Survivable Branch Appliances.

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. User policy information is stored in the Central Management store. The use of Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) also provides backward compatibility with earlier releases of Office Communications Server.

To administer servers and services, you use Lync Server Management Shell or the Lync Server Control Panel, which then configure the settings in the Central Management store. The Central Management Server, which runs on one Front End pool or one Standard Edition server in your deployment, replicates the configuration changes to all of the servers in your deployment.