1. Skype for Business:
Architecture and Design Considerations

2. Agenda Skype vs Skype for Business Architecture recommendations
Motivation for this session
Planning/deployment cycle
Deployment options
Architecture recommendations
Pool sizing
Enhanced manageability approaches

3. Skype vs Skype for Business
The consumer experience that people around the world know and love will continue to be referred to as Skype
Skype for Business brings together the familiar experience and user love of Skype with the enterprise security, compliance, and control from Lync
End users get a familiar Skype experience that is as easy to use at work as it is at home
For the past 10 years, Microsoft has invested in the transformation of business, disrupting the status quo with Lync, by simplifying and unifying all of the different tools people use to communicate for work. We made Lync a core part of Office to make it easy for people to connect with others to get work done. Lync means the freedom to work anywhere. It’s like tapping someone on the shoulder to say “let’s chat” no matter where you are in the world. Colleagues meet together and make decisions in an instant and IT Professionals rest easy knowing their end-users are supported by a secure platform that they manage and control.
Today, thousands of organizations, large and small, count on Lync for voice, video and conferencing.
At the same time, a decade ago, Skype broke down the distance barrier by bringing people together from all over the world. It forever changed the way people shared their lives by getting friends and family together to celebrate special moments and create extraordinary bonds.
Today, Skype is so much more. It’s used by more than 300 million people for messaging, calling and sharing. It lets people and groups connect in more spontaneous ways across multiple platforms to have fun and get things done. From desktop, to mobile to TV, it’s for communicating throughout the day, every day. Skype is a universal symbol of togetherness.
In the first half of 2015, the next version of Lync will become Skype for Business with a new client experience, new server release, and updates to the service in Office With the best of Lync, and the best of Skype, we believe that Skype for Business will again transform the way people communicate by giving organizations reach to hundreds of millions of Skype users outside the walls of their business.
We’re really excited about how Skype for Business takes advantage of the strengths of both Skype and Lync. Our approach is all about putting people at the center of the communications experience.

4. Motivation Satisfied customers Support and complexity
High quality Skype for Business implementation
Meeting customer requirements
Support and complexity
Fully supported and validated scenarios
Complexity needs to be manageable
Enable partners to be successful
Clear and descriptive guidance
Risk management
Reduce risk for customers and partners
Customer satisfaction
Cloud push
Partner enablement
Risk management

5. What is a successful deployment?
Business requirements
Well tested
Easy to deploy
Happy users
Well documented
Easy to run
High usage
Future proof

6. Skype for Business lifecycle
Readiness
Communications transformation
User feedback
Adopt
Plan
Business case
Strategic plan
Use cases
Run
Deploy
Operations
Change control
Call quality
Deployment topologies
Client strategy
Rollout

7. Deployment options

8. Recommended Topologies Standardized Topology
Deployment options
Supported
Topologies
Recommended Topologies
Structured Topology
Standardized Topology
Do you feel lucky?
Focus of today’s session
Reference Architectures
O365MT

9. Design decisions The important question: Goal: predictable outcome
Is “it” a good idea?
NOT: Will “it” work
Goal: predictable outcome
Successful project
Low risk

10. Deployment choice
Online
Hybrid
Server

11. Decision tree Missing features? Legal requirements? Global company?
Prohibitive customer infrastructure?
Does O365MT meet requirements?
Deploy “O365MT”
Yes No
Some new investments will require hybrid even for on premises customers  
Is Skype for Business hybrid an option?
Deploy hybrid
Yes No
Deploy on premises
Legal requirements?
Prohibitive customer infrastructure?

12. Skype for Business Online
O365MT
Customer AD
Skype for Business Online
Exchange Online
Customer User AD
Azure AD
Directory Synchronization

13. Skype for Business Online
All users are in a single user forest
There are no resource forests present
Also, there is only a single user forest
Single O365 tenant
Exchange is provided via O365
Skype for Business on premises can be introduced later with hybrid

14. Skype for Business Hybrid
O365MT
Customer AD
Skype for Business Online
Skype for Business Server
Split Domain
Exchange Online
Customer User AD
Azure AD
Directory Synchronization

15. Skype for Business Hybrid
All users are in a single user forest
There are no resource forests present
Also, there is only a single user forest
Skype for Business on premises is deployed in the user forest
Exchange
Skype for Business users online consume Exchange via Exchange Online
Skype for Business users on premises consume Exchange either online or on premises
Important
Federation and login via Skype for Business on premises environment

16. Skype for Business On Premises
Customer AD
Skype for Business Server
Customer User AD

17. Skype for Business On Premises
Skype for Business deployed in user forest
Exchange is provided either via
Exchange on premises in user forest
Exchange Online
Exchange Hybrid
Skype for Business hybrid can be enabled later

18. Three-forest architecture
Motivation
Enable partners to host Lync 2013 for customer
Provide full Lync on premises feature set while consuming Lync as a service
Consume Exchange from O365MT
Documentation
Whitepaper published September 2014
Deploying Lync in a Multi-Forest Architecture (Partner Hosted Lync with Exchange Hybrid)
TechEd session
Microsoft Lync Deployment Options and the Multi-Forest Architecture

19. Three-forest Directory Synchronization User Forest Azure AD
6/2/2018
Three-forest
Directory Synchronization
O365MT
User Forest
Azure AD
Exchange Server
Customer User AD
Exchange Online
FIM
Resource Forest
Lync Server
Resource Forest AD
© 2015 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

20. Three-forest status Only topology that allows combination of
Supported for Lync 2013
Since September 2014
Very complex
Three different forests interacting
Trust required between resource and user forest
Directory synchronization user forest and resource forest (FIM)
Directory synchronization user forest and O365 (DirSync)
Only topology that allows combination of
Lync in resource forest
Exchange in O365 (pure or hybrid)
Alternatives
Can customer AD be extended to partner datacenter?

21. Recommendations Skype for Business O365MT Skype for Business Hybrid
Single Tenant in O365MT
Single user forest
No resource forests
Skype for Business Hybrid
Skype for Business on premises

22. Architecture Recommendations

23. Pool decision tree Remember that Hybrid leverages on premises servers
Microsoft Lync
6/2/2018
Pool decision tree
Remember that Hybrid leverages on premises servers
Do you need High Availability?
Can Standard Edition Server support all users?
Do you need Disaster Recovery? no
yes
yes no
yes no
Do you need Disaster Recovery?
Single Enterprise Edition Pool
Single Standard Edition Pool
Paired Standard Edition Pools no
yes
Seriously?
Paired Enterprise Edition Pools
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

24. Enterprise Edition pool
Three Front Ends minimum
Two Front Ends supported but not recommended
Very specific steps required, if you need to restart your pool or servers
Use Hardware Load Balancer for HTTP
Never lose two (or more) servers at the same time
Consider failure domains when placing servers
HLB is only for HTTP/S

25. Routing groups Each user is part of exactly one routing group
Placement during user provisioning
Will change when servers are added to pool (or removed)
Holds information about this user
Presence, Contacts, Groups, Voice Settings, Conferences,…
Each routing group has three replicas
One Primary
Two secondary
If one replica is lost, pool will recover
If two replicas are lost, replica will lose quorum

26. Number of Upgrade Domains Front End Placement per Upgrade Domain
What is it?
Front End pools are organized in Upgrade Domains
Idea: All servers of a single upgrade domain can be offline without impacting availability
Routing groups are distributed to accomplish this goal
Initial Pool Size
Number of Upgrade Domains
Front End Placement per Upgrade Domain 12 8
First 8 FEs into 4 UD with 2 each, then 4 UD with 1 each 9
First 2 FEs into one UD, then 7 UD with 1 each
Each FE placed into its own UD 5

27. Pool quorum Pool quorum
Pool will go offline if less than 50% of Front End servers are available
Pool will also go offline if exact 50% are online but SQL database is not
Total Number of Front End Server in the pool (defined in Topology)
Number of Servers that must be running for pool to be functional 2 1
3-4
Any 2
5-6
Any 3 7
Any 4
8-9
Any 4 of the first 7 servers
10-12
Any 5 of the first 9 servers

28. Fault domains
“A fault domain is a set of hardware components – computers, switches, and more – that share a single point of failure.“
– IEEE Computer Magazine March 2011 Issue
Never lose two* Front End Servers at the same time!
*Except if they are part of the same upgrade domain
You cannot configure your upgrade domains
Use an n+1 model when planning your pools

29. Metropolitan and Lync 2013/Skype for Business
Not supported and will not provide HA
Pool quorum is not the main issue
Routing groups will be negatively impacted
As soon as one datacenter is unavailable, users will be impacted
Instead of higher availability, it will be lower
Solution
Don’t do Metropolitan!
Use paired pools

30. Front End: Disaster Recovery
Use paired pools
GeoDNS
Get sure that simple URLs and lyncdiscover still work

31. Disaster Recovery: Too close?
What disaster to protect against?

32. Front End: Too far? What is the latency? What is your bandwidth?
Remember: ITU recommends 150ms mouth-to-ear
Consider conferencing scenarios
What is your bandwidth?
What are your SLAs?

33. SQL back end database Same location as FE servers High Availability
SQL mirroring
One mirror server
Use SQL witness
“Feature Not Supported in a Future Version of SQL Server”
SQL AlwaysOn
Runs on top of Windows Server Failover Clustering
Up to three Secondary Replicas
SQL Enterprise required for more than one replica
Disaster Recovery
Via pool failover

34. File Share Used for Same location as FE servers High Availability
meeting content, address book files
Same location as FE servers
High Availability
Distributed File Share (DFS)
Disaster Recovery
Via pool failover

35. Office Web App Server Used for Same location as Front End pool
Presenting PowerPoint
Same location as Front End pool
High Availability
Pool of OWAS
Hardware Load Balancer recommended
Disaster Recovery
Via pool failover

36. Monitoring Server Database
Used for
Collection Quality of Experience and CDR data
Runs SQL Server Reporting Services and the Server Monitoring Reports
Globally one Monitoring database
Complete view on your data
For performance you might want to copy data to a second database and run reports against the second
High Availability
Via SQL

37. Edge Server Used for Same location as Front End pool High Availability
In Hybrid, on premises environment required for sign-in! High Availability is crucial
Used for
Remote Access, Federation, O365 Integration
Same location as Front End pool
High Availability
Pool of Edge Servers
DNS Load Balancing recommended
Disaster Recovery
Via pool failover
Hardware Load Balancing recommended if
Federation with OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2
Exchange UM 2007 or Exchange UM 2010
Legacy clients

38. Reverse Proxy Used for Same location as Edge Server High Availability
Meeting join, mobile clients, file download
Same location as Edge Server
Qualified Reverse Proxies to be published on TechNet
High Availability
Depends on Reverse Proxy solution
Disaster Recovery
Via pool failover

39. What about incoming calls?
Mediation Server
Connection to PSTN next hop
Placement depends…
With media bypass can be in datacenter
Without media bypass: next to PSTN next hop
High availability
Pool of mediation servers
Disaster Recovery
Multiple pools, multiple voice routes
What about incoming calls?

40. Mediation Server: co-location
Depends on the load on Mediation Server
Calls with Media Bypass put very little load on Mediation Server
Some type of calls will never leverage media bypass
Calls to/from external users via Edge
Conference dial-in/dial-out
Calls controlled by Call Admission Control
Dual homed mediation
Needs to be dedicated Mediation Server

41. Trade-off: survivability vs disaster recovery
SBA, SBS
Survivable Branch Appliance/Server
Place next to PSTN next hop
Qualified devices to be published on TechNet
High availability
Multiple gateways
User services provided by Front End Pool
Disaster recovery
SBA/SBS users will have only limited functionality mode in pool failover
Trade-off: survivability vs disaster recovery

42. Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)
Your next generation call quality reports!

43. Call Quality Dashboard
Components
Archive Database Quality of Experience (QoE) data is replicated and stored
QoE Cube Archive DB is aggregated for optimized and fast access
Reporting Web Portal Query and visualize QoE data
Recommendation
Sizing to be determined
Requires SQL
Enterprise or Business Intelligence

44. Video Interoperability Server (VIS)
Used for
Integration in VTC and video gateways
Place next to video next hop
Qualified devices to be published on TechNet
High availability
VIS pool
Skype for Business facing: DNS LB
Video next hop facing: multiple trunks, DNS LB
Disaster Recovery
Does your video next hop still exist?
Trunks to multiple pools
Will connect to failover Front End pool

45. Pool Sizing

46. [Wrong!] “The waterfall” Collect requirements Calculate server sizing
Deploy servers
Live happily ever after
[Wrong!]

47. Sizing numbers Supported users per server Useful as a starting point
This is based on recommended hardware
This is based on a very specific user model
Useful as a starting point
Need to be closely monitored and adopted

48. Healthy planning cycle
Based on user model
Size servers
Deploy
Enable users
Monitor Server health
Key Health Indicators
Stress and Load test
Start with pilot users

49. Examples from user model
User models in Lync Server 2013
Category
Description
Peer-to-peer IM sessions
Each user averages six peer-to-peer IM sessions per day.
10 instant messages per session.
Meeting concurrency
5% of users will be in conferences during working hours.
Media mix for conferences
75% of conferences are web conferences, which include audio plus some other collaboration modalities.
50% add application sharing. We assume one users sends data at a peak of 1.1 MB per second.
50% add instant messaging (with an average of 2 messages per user).
20% add data collaboration, including PowerPoint or whiteboard In these, an average of 2 PowerPoint files presented per conference, with an average PowerPoint file size of 10 MB (without embedded video) or 30 MB (with embedded video). Average of 20 annotations per whiteboard.
20% add video. Of these users, 70% are in conferences enabled for multiview video, where each user receives 2-3 video streams.
15% add shared notes

50. Server sizing [to be published] Server Lync 2013 Skype for Business
Front End Server
6,600
Edge Server
12,000
Mediation Server
1500 concurrent calls
Standard Edition Server
5000
[to be published]

51. Server sizing: Conclusion
Still testing Skype for Business for scalability
Don’t assume same sizing as Lync 2013
Even with in-place upgrade
Sizing numbers are a starting point
Good monitoring needs to be in place
Leverage Key Health Indicators (KHI) (
Scale out when required
Stress and load testing is a great idea!

52. Enhanced manageability approaches

53. InPlace Upgrade
More convenient upgrade path from Lync Server 2013 to Skype for Business by:
Preserving existing hardware/server investments
Smoother upgrade process without extensive planning
Reducing the overall cost for deployment
The goal of heading towards Smart Setup
Upgrade Path
Original Topology
New Topology
In-Place Upgrade Supported ?
Lync 2013
SfB
Yes. In-Place upgrade support from > SfB
Lync 2010
SfB
No. Upgrade from > SfB , Same as > 2013
Lync Coexistence
( )
Mandatory migration from > 2013 before deploying SfB. Then In-Place upgrade from 2013 to SfB

54. Server Operating System
Operating system selection impacts the installed version of Windows Fabric during setup:
Recommended OS: Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Fabric v3 is incompatible with Windows Server 2008 R2
Latest fixes for Windows Fabric may not be available for older operating systems
Operating System
Installed version of Windows Fabric
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Fabric v2
Windows Server 2012
Windows Fabric v3
Windows Server 2012 R2

55. SQL AlwaysOn SQL Server AlwaysOn HA Solutions AlwaysOn Advantages
Next generation of Database Mirroring technologies
Provides High Availability and Disaster Recovery in SQL
Introduced in SQL Server 2012 and present in SQL Server 2014
Runs on top of WSFC (Windows Server Failover Clustering)
AlwaysOn Advantages
Latest and Greatest SQL HA solution
Although database mirroring is still available in its original feature set, it is now considered a deprecated feature and will be removed in a future release of SQL Server.
More Reliable
AlwaysOn (One Primary, can have up to three corresponding Secondary Replicas)
Mirroring (One Primary, One Mirror)
Multi-Database Failovers
Useful in applications with several databases
Databases can be added to an Availability Group that can be failed over between replicas
All databases in Availability Group are failed over at the same time

56. Conclusion

57. Bringing it all together
Business requirements matter
Consider the full lifecycle
Forests matter
The simpler the better
Metropolitan does not provide HA
Be aware of failure and upgrade domains
Sizing is not a one-time activity
3forest does not support Lync hybrid