Step 3. Identify the Technical Requirements for Deploying Monitoring Server (2007 R2 Beta)

[This is preliminary documentation and is subject to change. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

This section describes the requirements to deploy Monitoring Server, including supported topologies, server hardware and software requirements, and infrastructure requirements.

Supported Topologies

The Monitoring Server feature includes three components:

• The Monitoring Server, which is the server role that captures usage data. This includes two parts: The CDR service for capturing CDR data, and the QoE service for capturing media quality data.
• The Monitoring Server database, which runs on SQL Server and stores the captured data.
• The Data Collection Agents, which are installed and activated automatically on every Front End server and Standard Edition server. Although agents are activated automatically, no data is actually captured unless a Monitoring Server is deployed and associated with that Enterprise pool or Standard Edition server.

Each Monitoring Server can capture data from one or more Enterprise pools, Standard Edition servers, and Mediation Servers. When you deploy a Monitoring Server, you associate it with the pools or servers that it is to monitor. Figure 1 illustrates two possible Monitoring Server topologies.

Figure 1. Monitoring Server topologies

Supported Collocation

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 supports a variety of collocation scenarios, allowing you flexibility to save hardware costs by running multiple components on one physical server, if you have a small organization, or to separate components onto different servers, if you have a larger organization that needs scalability and performance. Scalability factors should certainly be considered before you decide to collocate Monitoring Server or its database with other server roles or databases.

Monitoring Server can be collocated with a Standard Edition server. It can also be collocated with other Office Communications Server roles, such as Archiving Server. If Monitoring Server and Archiving Server are collocated, their databases can be hosted on that same server as well, or located on another server, or separated onto different database servers.

The Monitoring Server and the Monitoring Server database can be collocated on the same server or installed on separate servers, as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Monitoring Server database collocation

If the Monitoring Server and the Monitoring Server database are located on different servers, the server hosting the Monitoring Server database can also host other databases. The following scenarios are supported:

• Monitoring Server database collocated with one or more other Office Communications Server databases, (including the back-end database, Archiving database, and Response Group Service database, for example), in the same SQL Server instance.
• Monitoring Server database collocated with databases of third-party products.

Hardware Requirements

A computer that is to run Monitoring Server must meet the following hardware requirements:

The computer that will host the Monitoring Server database must meet these requirements:

Software Requirements

Monitoring Server

Supported Operating Systems for Monitoring Server

Monitoring Server can be installed on the following operating systems:

• The 64-bit edition of the Windows Server® 2008 Standard operating system or the 64-bit version of the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise operating system
• The Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard x64 Edition with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or the Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition operating system with SP2
• Windows Server 2003 with SP2 Standard x64 Edition with SP2 or Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition with SP2

Other Required and Recommended Software

You must also install the following software on the computer that is to run Monitoring Server:

• Message Queueing (required)

Servers Being Monitored

Required Software

You must install Message Queuing, with Active Directory integration enabled (Enterprise mode), on every Front End server or Standard Edition server from which a Monitoring Server will collect data. (It is not necessary to install Message Queuing on Mediation Servers that are being monitored.)

Monitoring Server Database

Supported Database Systems for Monitoring Server

The Monitoring Server database can use the following database management systems:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (32-bit or 64-bit)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) (32-bit or 64-bit)

Other Recommended Software

If you install SQL Server Reporting Services on the computer with the Monitoring Server database, you can generate detailed reports with the data that Monitoring Server collects. If you do not install this, the only way you can view Monitoring Server data is to write your own SQL queries against the Monitoring Server database.

If your database server runs SQL Server 2008, you must use SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. If the server runs SQL Server 2005, use SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services SP2 (recommended) or SP1.

See Also

Concepts

Step 4. Plan Your Deployment of Monitoring Server