Step 9. Plan for Address Book Server
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.
The Office Communications Server 2007 Address Book Server performs two important functions:
Its primary function is providing global address list information from Active Directory to Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. If Communicator accesses Active Directory directly, it could affect network performance. To make address book updates faster and more efficient, the Address Book Server acts as an intermediary to provide the updated local copy of the address list to the Communicator client. Address Book Server updates information for all users—not all users enabled for Office Communications Server.
Its secondary and optional function is performing phone number normalization for Communicator telephony integration.
The Address Book Server is an integral component of the Office Communications Server 2007 Front End Server and is installed along with other server components. In an Enterprise Pool, the Address Book Server runs on every Front End Server.
Each day, the Address Book Server performs the following tasks:
Retrieves contact information from an SQL Server Back-End Database (or an SQL Server Express Edition database stored on a Standard Edition Server).
Generates a set of compressed full files and delta files, which are stored in a standard NTFS folder.
The advantage of the full file and delta file generation is that it minimizes the impact of the client download. When a Communicator client logs on to its Enterprise pool or Standard Edition Server, it receives a URL to the NTFS folder. By using this URL, the client retrieves a full file the first day it connects to the server and delta files on subsequent days.
The following figure shows how the Address Book Server retrieves, stores, and propagates information.
Figure 38 Information Flow through Address Book Server
.jpg "ea7d89b1-9020-45d6-9fa9-59302a5b5229")
Address Book File Store and Data Files
The Address Book File Store is a shared NTFS folder with the name AddressBook. You must create this file before you run Office Communications Server 2007 Setup. During installation of Front End Server components, you will be asked by Setup to specify the Address Book File Store.
The data gathered by the Address Book Server is stored in a binary format in compressed files. The number of days the delta files are kept is set at the static value of 30 days, and this number cannot be changed. After 30 days, Address Book Server reaches a steady state, and a set of 465 files that include 30 full files and 435 delta files is stored in a directory accessible to clients through the Address Book URL.
The files are compressed to minimize storage requirements. The complete set of data files (30 full files and 435 delta files) is stored in the NTFS folder.
Each time the Address Book Server starts, it determines if there are data files in the output directory. If no data files are found, it will generate one full file. A delta file is not generated if there are no initial full files to compare against. The output files are written to a folder that can be assigned an access control list (ACL) by using the standard NTFS share permissions.
The following table illustrates how the full files and delta files are generated.
Table 106 Address Book Server file generation
| Day | Files Generated |
|---|---|
Day 1 |
Full (F1) |
Day 2 |
Full (F2), Delta of F2 - F1 |
Day 3 |
Full (F3) Delta of F3 –F2 Delta of F3 –F1 |
Day 4 |
Full (F4) Delta of F4 - F3 Delta of F4 - F2 Delta of F4 - F1 |
-------------------------------------- |
-------------------------------------- |
Day 30 |
Full (F30) Delta of F30-F29 Delta of F30-F28 ---- ----- Delta of F30-F1 |
All data files are stored in one directory. File names for full files are of the form F-xxxx, where xxxx is the file creation date expressed as the hexadecimal 0-based number of days since January 1, 2001. Delta file names are of the form D-xxxx-yyyy.lsabs, where xxxx is the full file creation date, and yyyy is the delta file creation date and . lsabs is a fixed extension. Files are created in memory and are written using a file handle that is created with no sharing allowed so that client applications cannot access a file before it has been completely written.
Information Flow
As explained earlier, Active Directory is the source for all user data. Information flows from Active Directory and through the components of the Address Book Server as shown in the previous figure.
File Size Guidelines
As a best practice, store Address Book data files on separate storage. The storage can be any of the many types, for example a DASD (direct access storage device) or a SAN (storage area network). The storage needs specific to the Address Book Server are very minimal and are expected to be in the range of 300 MB to 1 GB, depending on the number of users in the forest. The size of the full data files depends on the number of users and contacts stored in your Active Directory. The size of the delta files increases with the number of daily changes that occur to users and contacts in Active Directory. A large number of changes increases the delta file size and the time it takes to generate the delta file.
Table 107 Delta file changes
| Number of Users | Full File Average Size |
|---|---|
15,000 |
1.526 Mb |
60,000 |
6.098 Mb |
100,000 |
10.155 Mb |
400,000 |
40.623 Mb |