Office Web Apps Server
A new dependency for any Front End pool in
Lync Server 2013 is an Office Web Apps Server. This role is treated as
an external dependency, similar to how a SQL Server or file share is
leveraged by a Front End pool. For Lync Server 2013’s purposes, the
Office Web Apps server is exclusively used by rendering PowerPoint
slide decks within the Lync client or Lync Web App. This is important
because Microsoft Silverlight was used for rendering decks in Lync
Server 2010, but the dependency on Silverlight has been removed to
provide greater compatibility with web and mobile clients.
A single Office Web Apps Server, or
farm of Office Web Apps servers, can be deployed to support Lync Server
2013, Exchange Server 2013, and SharePoint 2013 since all three
platforms leverage the service for viewing or editing capabilities. The
main advantage to Office Web Apps PowerPoint rendering is seen in
improved support for animations and slide transitions, which
Silverlight did not always render properly. This does, however, mean
that organizations will need to deploy at least one additional server
to support Front End pools.
Monitoring and Archiving Servers
The Monitoring and Archiving server roles
have been removed as standalone servers in a Lync deployment. Instead,
these services are now collocated on Front End Servers within a pool as
a check-box option while the pool is being defined within Topology
Builder. The data is still stored within a SQL server, which can be the
same instance used by the Front End pool or a different instance. This
reduces the number of servers an organization needs in order to deploy
and manage so this is a welcome change.
Standalone A/V Conferencing Server
The option to deploy a standalone A/V
conferencing server has been removed from Lync Server 2013. This role
was geared toward supporting large A/V conferencing workloads, but the
video conferencing codec change and performance improvements have
negated the need to separate this role. The A/V conferencing role is
now always installed on Front End servers within a pool, which helps to
simplify deployments. Those migrating from older versions will notice
the Front End servers taken on a much greater load.
Server-to-Server Authentication
New to Lync Server 2013 is the concept of
server-to-server authentication, which allows for Lync to interact with
Exchange Server 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 on behalf of users.
This authentication is done through a standard called Open
Authorization (OAuth) where servers are granted a level of trust
between each other via security tokens. There is no requirement to turn
on this authentication feature, but it does enable a number of new
features.
Note
Server-to-server authentication can be used
only between Lync Server 2013, Exchange Server 2013, and SharePoint
Server 2013. This means that users must already have Exchange Server
2013 mailboxes in order to take advantage of the following features.
Exchange Archiving
The first feature enabled through
server-to-server authentication is the capability to target a user’s
Exchange mailbox as the archiving location. Lync Server 2013 still has
the capability to store archived data in a SQL database, but using this
feature instead directs the archive content to a hidden folder in the
user’s Exchange database.
The advantage to this is in the
eDiscovery process because legal administrators can now run content
searches against mailboxes and Lync data using just the Exchange Server
tools. From a policy perspective it also allows a single archiving
policy in Exchange to apply to both Lync and Exchange content, ensuring
content is archived or purged on the same schedule. The Exchange
Control Panel has a much more refined interface for searches than Lync
has ever offered, so this should help simplify the eDiscovery process.
Unified Contact Store
The second feature enabled via
server-to-server authentication is the Unified Contact Store (UCS), an
option that nearly made it into Lync Server 2010, but was scrapped at
the very end. Without UCS users maintain separate contact lists within
Exchange and Lync, where information might not be in sync, and the data
is stored independently. When the UCS feature is enabled for a user,
the contact list is consolidated to Exchange and can no longer be
directly edited with Lync, but users can now edit their contact lists
without being signed in to a Lync endpoint.
The Lync servers maintain a cached, read-only
copy of the contact list that users can still view when Exchange is
offline, but any modifications are made to the copy that Exchange
holds. When UCS is enabled, users see the same people card and
favorites lists for contacts. The contacts are de-duped, and support
for high-resolution Active Directory photos up to a 648×648 resolution
is enabled.
Some of the drivers for this change were the
fact that multiple contacts for the same user were returned in many
Lync searches, potentially with different data, which often confused
end users. Mobile clients also did not always have the same contact
information stored locally, so this allows mobile users to see
consistent data for a contact.
Skype Federation
Ever since Microsoft began the
acquisition process of Skype, there have been questions and speculation
about what type of integration would be made with Lync. In Lync Server
2013, federation to Skype has been added, and it looks similar to how
federation with other public IM providers is
achieved. For the initial release the integration will be for presence,
IM, and audio only. Video support is still in the developmental stages
and will likely be added during a future cumulative update package.
XMPP Gateway
The XMPP Gateway role was originally released
for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and had not received even as
much as a name change when Lync Server 2010 came along. With Lync
Server 2013 the XMPP gateway role has been moved into the Front End
Server as a native service, and the Edge Server includes an XMPP proxy
service to facilitate connections to remote XMPP partners.
The maddening limit of requiring one XMPP
gateway per SIP domain has also been removed, and the gateway service
can now handle XMPP connections for multiple SIP domains.
Persistent Chat
Group Chat has been rebranded as
Persistent Chat starting with Lync Server 2013, and both the client and
the server components have finally been integrated with the rest of
Lync. The installation bits come on the same media, and the setup
process for Persistent Chat has been moved into Topology Builder like
any other role; also, the Lync Control Panel includes a section for
room management. Persistent Chat has gained high-availability and
disaster recovery capabilities similar to Front End Servers, and now
scales to 15,000 endpoints per room. SQL Mirroring is used to provide
high availability for the back end in a similar fashion to the Front
End databases.
Hybrid and On-Premise Deployment Integration
Lync Server 2013 is the first release to
offer integration with Office 365 in a hybrid mode. The only option
available previously was to use a separate SIP domain for Office 365
cloud users and the on-premise users, but the hybrid model allows for
the same namespace to be used in both sides.
Not only does a hybrid connection allow for
IM and presence integration, but organizations can now connect their
Office 365 hosted users with an on-premise telephony or video
conferencing solution. This enables administrators to migrate some user
accounts to the cloud, but maintain an on-premise phone number, as
shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Hybrid voice topology.
A strict requirement for Lync Hybrid
scenarios is that an organization first deploy Active Directory
Federation Services (ADFS) for single sign-on with Office 365. The
Office 365 federated identity cannot be used.
