Although this section doesn’t cover the simple “check box” to add the
monitoring components to the Front End Server, it does cover the other
items that are required for a fully functional Lync Monitoring
deployment. The Monitoring role allows administrators to collect,
trend, and review quantitative data related to audio calls, video
calls, and IM messages. The Monitoring Server leverages Microsoft
Message Queuing technology to collect information and deposit it in the
monitoring database. Then it leverages SQL Server Reporting Services to
display various canned and custom reports.
1. Installing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services
The Lync Server 2013 Monitoring server
leverages Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services to provide rich
reports related to usage and quality of experience data. This section
assumes you’ve already installed SQL and are familiar with the process.
Small installations that chose to use the Enterprise edition of Lync
Server 2013 can use the same SQL Server as the Front End pool; however,
most larger deployments require a separate SQL Server and, in very
large installations, a separate SQL Reporting Services server. In the
steps that follow, you’ll walk through the installation process and
post-installation steps for SQL Reporting Services.
During the SQL Server 2012 Installation
Wizard, ensure that the Reporting Services box is checked and continue
through the wizard. Be sure to examine the scalability requirements for
your environment to determine whether the reporting services role
should be placed on the SQL database server or on a dedicated serve.
The administrator must also decide where to install the Reporting
Services database, either on an existing SQL server or on the Reporting
Services server. In general, it is recommended to collocate the
Reporting Services database on the Reporting Services Server. After the
SQL Reporting Services role is installed, it needs to be configured
before the Monitoring Server can use it.
From the Start Menu, navigate to All
programs, Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Configuration tools and select
Reporting Services Configuration Manager. Ensure that the appropriate
server and instance are selected and click Connect. To finish
installing the Monitoring Components, follow these steps:
1. Click the Server Account button in the left column and set the appropriate report server service account.
2. Click the Web
Service URL button. Review the settings. Usually the default settings
are acceptable. However, if you want to use SSL, you’ll need to pick
the certificate to be used. A certificate can be requested from the IIS
console.
3. Click the Database
button. Ensure that the proper database server is set. Ensure that the
correct credentials are set to access the database.
4. Click the Report Manager URL button. Select the virtual directory to be used to access reports. By default, this is “Reports.”
Now the SQL Reporting Services
server is almost ready. After the Monitoring server is installed,
you’ll need to deploy the Monitoring Server Report Pack to the SQL
Reporting Server as reviewed in the following text.
2. Monitoring Configuration
The good news about Lync Server 2013 is that
with the Topology Builder tool much of the configuration is done
automatically. Although both configuration and administration can be
done from the Silverlight web GUI or the Lync Server Management Shell,
the configuration section focuses on the former and the administration
section focuses on the latter, to avoid duplication of concepts.
Open the Lync Server Control Panel. For reference, it can be found at the short URL you defined earlier, https://lyncadmin.companyabc.com/ in the sample environment, or https://<pool_FQDN>/Cscp/.
Scrolling down in the left bar, click on the
Monitoring and Archiving button. This brings up the settings menus for
the Monitoring and Achiving server roles. By default, there is only one
Call Detail Recording policy. Select it and click Edit and then Modify.
These are the available options:
• Name (the name of the policy)
• Enable Monitoring of Call Detail Records (CDRs)
• Enable Purging for Monitoring Servers
• Options for duration to keep CDRs and error reports
The next item across the top bar is the
Quality of Experience (QoE) Data menu. Microsoft’s approach to
measuring the user experience is through QoE data that provides
qualitative and quantitative analysis of every call. It also provides
some metrics around instant messaging and network type (VPN versus LAN
versus WAN) as well. This also comes with one policy by default. The
only option is whether to enable purging and, if so, how long to keep
QoE data. By default, this value is set to 60 days.
The next step is to deploy the Monitoring
Server reports to the SQL Reporting Server. This step can be done using
the Lync Server Management Shell or from the main screen of the
deployment wizard. From any of the Lync Server 2013 servers, open the
Lync Server Management Shell and run as administrator. Where D is the drive letter assigned to your CD/DVD drive where the Lync installation CD/DVD/ISO is mounted, run the DeployReports.ps1 PowerShell script as this:
D:\setup\amd64\setup\reportingsetup\DeployReports.ps1 -storedUserName <domain\user> -storePassword <password>
This is the most minimalist version of the command. The full syntax including optional items is outlined here:
DeployReports.ps1 -storedUserName <domain\user> -storedPassword <password>
-readOnlyGroupName <ReportReadOnlyGroupName> -reportServerSQLInstance
<ReportServerSQLInstance>
An explanation of each option is presented here:
• storedUserName—The username used to access the Monitoring Server store.
• storedPassword—The password for the value of storedUserName.
• readOnlyGroupName—The
domain group that will be granted read-only access to the Monitoring
Server reports. This group must already exist in Active Directory for
the action to complete successfully.
• reportServerSQLInstance—The
SQL instance that is hosting SQL Reporting Services. If this is left
blank, the script assumes that it is the same server that holds the
Monitoring Server databases.
Run the get-CsService -MonitoringServer cmdlet and pay special attention to the ReportingURL field. This is the URL where you’ll access the Lync Server reports.
