Note
Federation is not limited to organizations
with only Lync Server, but can also be used with IBM Sametime or Cisco
Unified Presence Server for organizations that have not deployed Lync
Server. Lync Server 2013 adds native federation with Skype to its
impressive list of interoperability partners.
2. Public IM Connectivity
A special type of federation called public IM
connectivity (PIC) enables MCS users to communicate with contacts using
the various public IM networks. Although many organizations have
deployed previous versions of a Communications Server and support
federation, there are still needs to communicate with public IM
contacts at times.
Lync Server supports the following public IM providers:
• AOL
• MSN
• Skype
Additionally, federation to Google
Talk users can be provisioned through the XMPP Gateway Server role. PIC
connectivity provides presence and peer-to-peer IM for all providers,
but in Lync Server, peer-to-peer A/V conversations can also be used
with Windows Live and Skype contacts.
3. Archiving
For organizations that have archiving or
compliance needs, Lync Server provides the Archiving function, which
captures IM traffic and web conferencing data. New for Lync 2013, this
function is collocated on all the front-end servers in a pool. All
archiving data is saved either to a Microsoft SQL Server database or to
Exchange Server 2013, depending on the environment and administrator’s
choice.
Archiving can be enabled at the pool
level to capture traffic for all users or it can be enabled on a
per-user basis if archiving needs to be done only for a select group of
users. If an organization has no need to capture internal traffic,
archiving can also be configured to log only federated traffic.
4. Monitoring
A key factor in determining the success of an
audio and video deployment is insight into how the system performs for
the end users. Lync Server provides out-of-the-box monitoring
capabilities with the Monitoring function. Like Lync Archiving, the
Monitoring function is also now collocated on all the front-end servers
for a pool. When deployed, endpoints submit reports when completing an
audio or video call, which are then stored in SQL databases dedicated
to call records and monitoring data.
Two types of reports are
collected. One report, referred to as call detail records (CDR),
contains information about when the call occurred and what endpoints
were involved. The other is a Quality of Experience (QoE) report that
contains comprehensive data, including the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of
various components, which indicates the call quality in both
directions. These reports also identify which subnet the endpoints used
so that administrators can quickly isolate any issues to a specific
device or network segment.
Note
A SQL Server Report Pack is bundled with the
installation media so administrators have immediate access to rich
reports about how the system is used.
Lync Server also supports synthetic
transactions that are PowerShell cmdlets an administrator can run,
which simulate actions taken by users against the server. Examples of
these transactions are a user signing in, two users sending IM messages
to each other, and a test audio call between two endpoints. These
synthetic transactions can be used to test user functionality
systemwide on a recurring basis or in conjunction with the Microsoft
System Center Operations Manager management pack for Lync Server, which
includes support for the transactions.
