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DNS load balancing in Lync Server 2013

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Topic Last Modified: 2014-01-15

Lync Server enables DNS load balancing, a software solution that can greatly reduce the administration overhead for load balancing on your network. DNS load balancing balances the network traffic that is unique to Lync Server, such as SIP traffic and media traffic.

If you deploy DNS load balancing, your organization’s administration overhead for hardware load balancers will be minimized. Additionally, complex troubleshooting of problems related to misconfiguration of load balancers for SIP traffic will be eliminated. You can also prevent server connections so that you can take servers offline. DNS load balancing also ensures that hardware load balancer problems do not affect elements of SIP traffic such as basic call routing.

If you use DNS load balancing, you may also be able to purchase lower-cost hardware load balancers than if you used the hardware load balancers for all types of traffic. You should use load balancers that have passed interoperability qualification testing with Lync Server. For details about load balancer interoperability testing, see "Lync Server 2010 Load Balancer Partners" at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkId=202452.

DNS load balancing is supported for Front End pools, Edge Server pools, Director pools, and stand-alone Mediation Server pools.

DNS Load Balancing on Front End Pools and Director Pools

You can use DNS load balancing for the SIP traffic on Front End pools and Director pools. With DNS load balancing deployed, you still need to also use hardware load balancers for these pools, but only for client-to-server HTTPS traffic. The hardware load balancer is used for HTTPS traffic from clients over ports 443 and 80.

Although you still need hardware load balancers for these pools, their setup and administration will be primarily for HTTPS traffic, which the administrators of hardware load balancers are accustomed to.

DNS Load Balancing and Supporting Older Clients and Servers

DNS load balancing supports automatic failover only for servers running Lync Server 2013 or Lync Server 2010, and for Lync 2013 and Lync 2010 clients. Earlier versions of clients and Office Communications Server can still connect to pools running DNS load balancing, but if they cannot make a connection to the first server that DNS load balancing refers them to, they are unable to fail over to another server in the pool.

Additionally, if you are using Exchange UM, you must use a minimum of Exchange 2010 SP1 to get support for Lync Server DNS load balancing. If you use an earlier version of Exchange, your users will not have failover capabilities for these Exchange UM scenarios:

  • Playing their Enterprise Voice voice mail on their phone

  • Transferring calls from an Exchange UM Auto Attendant

All other Exchange UM scenarios will work properly.

Deploying DNS Load Balancing on Front End Pools and Director Pools

Deploying DNS load balancing on Front End pools and Director pools requires you to perform a couple of extra steps with FQDNs and DNS records.

  • A pool that uses DNS load balancing must have two FQDNs: the regular pool FQDN that is used by DNS load balancing (such as pool01.contoso.com), and resolves to the physical IPs of the servers in the pool, and another FQDN for the pool’s Web services (such as web01.contoso.com), which resolves to virtual IP address of the pool.

    In Topology Builder, if you want to deploy DNS load balancing for a pool, to create this extra FQDN for the pool’s Web services you must select the Override internal Web Services pool FQDN check box and type the FQDN, in the Specify the Web Services URLs for this Pool page.

  • To support the FQDN used by DNS load balancing, you must provision DNS to resolve the pool FQDN (such as pool01.contoso.com) to the IP addresses of all the servers in the pool (for example, 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2, and so on). You should include only the IP addresses of servers that are currently deployed.

    Warning

    If you have more than one Front End pool or Front End Server the external Web services FQDN must be unique. For example, if you define the external Web services FQDN of a Front End Server as pool01.contoso.com, you cannot use pool01.contoso.com for another Front End pool or Front End Server. If you are also deploying Directors, the external Web services FQDN defined for any Director or Director pool must be unique from any other Director or Director pool as well as any Front End pool or Front End Server. If decide to override the Internal web services with a self-defined FQDN, each FQDN must be unique from any other Front End pool, Director or a Director pool.

DNS Load Balancing on Edge Server Pools

You can deploy DNS load balancing on Edge Server pools. If you do, you must be aware of some considerations.

Using DNS load balancing on your Edge Servers causes a loss of failover ability in the following scenarios:

  • Federation with organizations that are running versions of Office Communications Server released prior to Lync Server 2010.

  • Instant message exchange with users of public instant messaging (IM) services AOLand Yahoo!, in addition to XMPP-based providers and servers, such as Google Talk.

    Important

    • Google Talk is currently the only supported XMPP partner.

    • As of September 1st, 2012, the Microsoft Lync Public IM Connectivity User Subscription License (“PIC USL”) is no longer available for purchase for new or renewing agreements. Customers with active licenses will be able to continue to federate with Yahoo! Messenger until the service shut down date. An end of life date of June 2014 for AOL and Yahoo! has been announced. For details, see Support for public instant messenger connectivity in Lync Server 2013.

These scenarios will work as long as all Edge Servers in the pool are up and running, but if one Edge Server is unavailable, any requests for these scenarios that are sent to it will fail, instead of routing to another Edge Server.

If you are using Exchange UM, you must use a minimum of Exchange 2013 to get support for Lync Server DNS load balancing on Edge. If you use an earlier version of Exchange, your remote users will not have failover capabilities for these Exchange UM scenarios:

  • Playing their Enterprise Voice voice mail on their phone

  • Transferring calls from an Exchange UM Auto Attendant

All other Exchange UM scenarios will work properly.

The internal Edge interface and external Edge interface must use the same type of load balancing. You cannot use DNS load balancing on one Edge interface and hardware load balancing on the other Edge interface.

Deploying DNS Load Balancing on Edge Server Pools

To deploy DNS load balancing on the external interface of your Edge Server pool, you need the following DNS entries:

  • For the Access Edge service, you need one entry for each server in the pool. Each entry must resolve the FQDN of the Access Edge service (for example, sip.contoso.com) to the IP address of the Access Edge service on one of the Edge Servers in the pool.

  • For the Web Conferencing Edge service, you need one entry for each server in the pool. Each entry must resolve the FQDN of the Web Conferencing Edge service (for example, webconf.contoso.com) to the IP address of the Web Conferencing Edge service on one of the Edge Servers in the pool.

  • For the Audio/Video Edge service, you need one entry for each server in the pool. Each entry must resolve the FQDN of the Audio/Video Edge service (for example, av.contoso.com) to the IP address of the A/V Edge service on one of the Edge Servers in the pool.

To deploy DNS load balancing on the internal interface of your Edge Server pool, you must add one DNS A record, which resolves the internal FQDN of the Edge Server pool to the IP address of each server in the pool.

Using DNS Load Balancing on Mediation Server Pools

You can use DNS load balancing on stand-alone Mediation Server pools. All SIP and media traffic is balanced by DNS load balancing.

To deploy DNS load balancing on a Mediation Server pool, you must provision DNS to resolve the pool FQDN (for example, mediationpool1.contoso.com) to the IP addresses of all the servers in the pool (for example, 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2, and so on).

Blocking Traffic to a Server With DNS Load Balancing

If you use DNS load balancing and you need to block traffic to a specific computer, it is not sufficient to just remove the IP address entries from the Pool FQDN. You must remove the DNS entry for the computer as well.

Note that for server-to-server traffic, Lync Server 2013 uses topology-aware load balancing. Servers read the published topology in the Central Management store to obtain the FQDNs of servers in the topology, and automatically distribute the traffic among the servers. To block a server from receiving server-to-server traffic, you must remove the server from the topology.