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Infrastructure Requirements and Prerequisites in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition

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.

Software, Hardware, and Audio/Video Infrastructure Requirements

Before you deploy Office Communications Server Enterprise Edition, ensure that your environment meets the software, hardware, and audio/video infrastructure requirements as described in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Planning Guide.

Additionally, Internet Information Services (IIS) is a required component for any Enterprise Edition Server running the Web Components Server. If you are using a load balancer for your pool, you must configure IIS to allow loopback for the load balancer FQDN or the validation wizard will fail. For more information about configuring your IIS server to allow loopback for the FQDN of the VIP of your load balancer, see Appendix D: Configure IIS to Allow Load Balancer FQDN for Loopback. You can remove this FQDN after the validation wizard is complete.

  • For pools in a consolidated configuration, you must deploy IIS before you can add servers to the pool.

  • For pools in the expanded configuration, you must deploy IIS on all Web Components Servers in your pool before you can add a Web Components Server to the pool.

Planning Requirements

Ensure that you have read the Planning Guide to determine the best deployment path for your organization. In particular, ensure that you have provided for the following:

  • Choose between an Office Communications Server Enterprise Edition consolidated configuration or an expanded configuration, and allocate the appropriate computers. In some instances, you will deploy both the consolidated configuration and the expanded configuration.

  • Each Office Communications Server is a member of the same domain as the Enterprise pool that you create for it.

  • Using a load balancer in SNAT mode is recommended for ease of deployment, however be aware each SNAT IP address on the load balancer limits the maximum number of simultaneous connections to 65,000. If you deploy load balancer in SNAT mode, ensure you configure a minimum of one SNAT IP address for each group of 65,000 users. (The open number of connections generally corresponds to the number of active users.) For example, in a deployment supporting 100,000 users, you would configure two SNAT IP addresses.

  • If you use a DNAT (destination network address translation) load balancer for your Enterprise pools, the following is required:

    • Each pool must reside in a distinct IP subnet from other pools, because the Front End Servers in each pool must reside in this distinct IP subnet.

    • For a pool in the expanded configuration, only the Front End Servers must be placed in this distinct IP subnet. All other roles – the Web Conferencing, A/V Conferencing, and Web Components Servers – must reside outside the distinct IP subnet for the Front End Servers. There is no additional restriction on how these other roles can be placed on the network.

  • If you are planning to archive or if your organization has regulatory compliance requirements, determine if you want to deploy the Office Communications Server 2007 Archiving and CDR Server before you configure your Enterprise pool (You must create the pool before deployment). If you deploy the Archiving and CDR Server before you configure your Enterprise pool, you can configure archiving on your servers during the Enterprise Edition deployment process.

Windows Service Dependencies

We recommend that you disable the Microsoft Windows® operating system services that are not required on the computers where you install Office Communications Server. Table 1 describes the Windows services that Office Communications Server requires. You can safely disable all other services.

Table 1. Office Communications Server Service Dependencies

Office Communications Server Service Name Windows Service Dependencies

Office Communications Server Front-End (RTCSRV)

HTTP SSL (HTTP, IIS Admin Service, Remote Procedure Call, Security Accounts Manager)

Windows Management Instrumentation (Event Log and Remote Procedure Call)

Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions

If archiving is enabled, Message Queuing (Message Queuing access control, NTLM Security Support Provider (NTLMSSP) service, Remote Procedure Call, RMCAST (Pgm) Protocol Driver, TCP/IP Protocol Driver, IPSEC Driver, Security Accounts Manager)

Office Communications Server Audio/Video Conferencing (RTCAVMCU)

HTTP SSL (HTTP, IIS Admin Service, Remote Procedure Call, Security Accounts Manager)

Windows Management Instrumentation (Event Log and Remote Procedure Call)

Office Communications Server IM Conferencing (RTCIMMCU)

HTTP SSL (HTTP, IIS Admin Service, Remote Procedure Call, Security Accounts Manager)

Windows Management Instrumentation (Event Log and Remote Procedure Call)

Office Communications Server Telephony Conferencing (RTCACPMCU)

HTTP SSL (HTTP, IIS Admin Service, Remote Procedure Call, Security Accounts Manager)

Windows Management Instrumentation (Event Log and Remote Procedure Call)

Office Communications Server Web Conferencing (RTCDATAMCU)

HTTP SSL (HTTP, IIS Admin Service, Remote Procedure Call, Security Accounts Manager)

Windows Management Instrumentation (Remote Procedure Call)

Office Communications Server Archiving and CDR (RTCLOG)

Message Queuing (Message Queuing access control, NTLM Security Support Provider (NTLMSSP) service, Remote Procedure Call, RMCAST (Pgm) Protocol Driver, TCP/IP Protocol Driver, IPSEC Driver, Security Accounts Manager)

Storage Requirements

As explained in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Planning Guide, before you deploy Enterprise Edition servers, determine your storage needs and create three shared folders on a dedicated file server, using either the suggested folder names or your own folder names, in order to store the following:

  • Presentations - Meeting presentations to be downloaded or streamed by conference attendees.

  • Metadata - Meeting information (metadata) that is used internally by the Web Conferencing Server component for the pool.

  • ABS - Address Book information that is used by the Address Book Server, which is included with the Web Components Server, in order to provide global address list information to Office Communicator 2007 and Office Communicator 2005 clients on a daily basis.

Grant Full Control on each of these shared folders to the administrator, the RTCUniversalServerAdmins group, and any other user or group responsible for creating pools. Remove Read permission from the Everyone group.

If your organization must comply with regulatory requirements for the archiving of meeting content, you can enable meeting compliance. In order to administer meeting compliance, you must first create a shared folder on a dedicated file server in order to store the meeting logs. You can use the suggested name or your own folder name in order to store the following:

  • MeetingCompliance (optional) - Meeting activities and content uploaded during meetings

Grant the RTCComponentUniversalServices group Full Control on this shared folder, and any other user or group responsible for creating pools. Remove Read permission from the Everyone group.

If you plan to install the Archiving and CDR Server as described in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Archiving and CDR Server Deployment Guide, then also consider storage needs for archiving files.

Note

If you use a shared cluster for the file shares in your deployment, use the Cluster Administrator to create the file shares. For details about using the Cluster Administrator, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 284838, “How to Create a Server Cluster File Share with Cluster.exe” at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=140899