Andrew Ehrensing Microsoft Corporation

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Hardware and Software Requirements

Front End Server • • • •

Topology changes that affect hardware sizing

Collocated A/V MCU Collocated XMPP gateway New CPU intensive features (Multiview, HD Conferencing etc.) Storage – BE functionality moving to FE •

Scalability change

12 Servers per Pool • • 6.5K users per Front End*

Windows Fabric and Quorum

Enterprise Edition Pool should be at least 3 FE servers

Hardware and Software Requirements

Front End Server, Back End Server, Standard Edition Servers, and Persistent Chat Servers

Hardware requirements

Component Spec (Minimum)

Server CPU Enterprise-grade server with a minimum of 2 CPU sockets Hex core CPU at 2.26ghz or higher NIC Storage • 1 dual-port network adapter, 1 Gbps or higher (2 recommended, which requires teaming with a single MAC address and single IP address) 8 or more 10,000 RPM hard disk drives with at least 72 GB free disk space. • Two of the disks should use RAID 1, and six should use RAID 10.

[ OR ]

• Solid state drives (SSDs) which provide performance similar to 8 10,000-RPM mechanical disk drives. 32 GB Memory RTCLOCAL and LYNCLOCAL database size changes Initial size: 4GB per DB – Should be planned beforehand (especially for Virtual Machines) 4

5

Hardware and Software Requirements

Director, Monitoring, Archiving Servers, and Edge Servers

Hardware requirements

Component

Server CPU NIC Storage Memory

Spec (minimum)

• Enterprise-grade server with a minimum of 2 CPU sockets 2 x CPU Quad core 2ghz or higher • 4 x CPU dual core 2ghz or higher 1 dual-port network adapter, 1 Gbps or higher (2 recommended, which requires teaming with a single MAC address and single IP address) 4 or more 10,000 RPM hard disk drives with at least 72 GB free disk space - OR Solid state drives (SSDs) which provide performance similar to 4 10,000-RPM mechanical disk drives 16GB PC2-6400 DDR2, or PC3-8500 DDR3 memory (or faster)

Hardware and Software Requirements

Admin Tools, Active Directory, Infrastructure Admin Tools and Core Components Windows 7 (x64 only) and Windows Server ® 2008 R2 - Windows 8 on the way Microsoft Windows PowerShell™ V3 required Active Directory Forest/Domain Functional Level Windows Server 2003 (Native mode only) Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2012 7 Infrastructure Hardware Load Balancer (HLB) for Web Services (internal and external), Edge Pools, and Reverse Proxy Even with DNS load balancing deployed, HWLB is still required for HTTP/HTTPS traffic Hardware Load Balancer Partners for Lync Server http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/gg269419

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Server Virtualization

• Support for all Lync Server 2013 workloads Supported on Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition and all other roles • Take advantage of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V (3.0) New large vCPU with NUMA architecture and large memory support • • • Supported Hypervisors Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V ® minimum (guest and host) VMWare ESX 5 SVVP • • • Unsupported Virtualization Features Quick/Live Migration Dynamic Memory (Being tested) VM Replica Use current Lync Server 2010 hardware recommendations for virtualization Virtualization support in Lync 2013 Planning Tool

Virtualization Type Description Server Virtualization

Enable multiple operating systems (or “virtual machines”) and applicable workloads to share the resources of a single server

Examples

  Microsoft Windows Hyper-V VMWare ESX Server

Application Virtualization

Application virtualization (also referred to as Application Streaming) decouples applications from the operating system and enables them to run as network services.

  Microsoft App-V Citrix XenApp

Session Virtualization

Session virtualization with (RDS) delivers session-based desktops (also referred to as Full Desktop Remoting) or applications (also referred as Application Remoting) suited for low complexity or task worker scenarios.

  Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Citrix XenApp

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (also referred to as Full Desktop Remoting ) is an alternative desktop delivery model that lets users access desktops that are running in the datacenter.   Microsoft RDS-VDI Citrix XenDesktop

Planning Topic

Guest Core Count Physical/Virtual instances in the same pool Performance based load balancing Quick Migration / Live Migration / Vmotion

Impact

Some hypervisors have limits of guest cores (Hyper-V v2.0 is 4 cores, VMware can be 8 cores, etc…) Some vendors recommend a practical limit less than the technical limit (6 instead of 8) Newer hypervisors (Windows Hyper-V v3) have increased these limits past the Lync physical hardware sizing guidance Lync requires all servers in the same pool to be the same instance type – either physical or virtual. You cannot mix physical and virtual servers in the same pool Lync Server 2013 does not provide performance based load balancing to direct traffic to computers based on hardware/virtual capacity. Assumes all instances are equal.

Lync Server 2013 does not support Quick/Live migration capabilities (technical challenges with redirecting real time media traffic)

Planning Topic

Resource Segmentation / Resource Isolation Hypervisor Overhead Host Root Partition Storage Dynamic Memory

Impact

Current hypervisors do NOT have the capability to provide dedicated resource isolation / resource segmentation for all 4 physical components – processor, network, memory, and storage.

Other guests running on the same physical server or virtualization pool can have a negative effect on Lync performance Hypervisors add overhead to a virtual machine guest, typically 6-10% (ask your virtualization vendor for specific guidance). This varies based on the hardware platform and hypervisor Lync Server 2013 does not support other applications running on the Hypervisor host root partition Lync Server 2013 recommends that storage be setup either as fixed disk or as pass-through storage. Dynamically expanding disks add overhead during the disk expansion.

Lync Server 2013 does not support Dynamic Memory

Planning Topic

Oversubscription of CPU

Impact

Lync Server 2013 guests should NOT be provisioned on hypervisor hosts which are configured for CPU oversubscription. Ensure you have the CPU overhead of hypervisor accounted for.

If the hypervisor physical host has 24 cores no more than 21-22 total cores should be allocated to all of the virtual guests ( Placement of virtual guests Lync Server 2013 assumes that all servers in a pool are on a discrete hardware platform. This is a fundamental part of the high availability story for Lync 2013. If more than one Lync server in the same pool is on the same physical host, a failure of the physical host will have a greater impact as multiple servers in the pool will fail at the same time

Microsoft Lync includes several real time workloads (audio/video, conferencing, etc…) that require real time access to components such as processor, memory, network, and storage. If these components are shared among other guests and Lync does not have access to these as required, the result can be a negative user experience including dropped calls, staccato audio, jitter, inability to join a conference, paused video, and other user noticeable degradation of service results. These can be difficult to troubleshoot, as an analysis of the physical and virtual guests at a later point in time may show normal operations, it is only during periods of high utilization from other guests that these issues may surface.

FE High Availability (“Bricks”) BE High Availability (SQL Mirroring) Front End Pool Pairing (SR) All Lync 2013 HA and SR leverage native Lync technology, not hypervisor HA/SR functionality. Virtualization HA/SR functionality is not supported Planning, Deployment and Operations

Network Component Description

SRV-IOV Hyper-V Extensible Switch Hyper-V Single Root I/O Virtualization Network Support SR-IOV allows virtual machines near native IO against a physical network interface Hyper-V has an extensible switch that allows 3 rd party filtering, capturing, and forwarding extensions VMQUEUE VM Chimney / TCP Offload

Recommend Impact to Lync

Yes No Virtual Machine Queuing is supported on specific Intel and BroadCom chipsets Yes Some hypervisors allow the capability of offloading TCP processing to the CPU from the NIC. This was modified in Windows Server 2012 See next slide Lync guests should leverage SR IOV Lync guests should NOT leverage Hyper-V extensible switches, this can disrupt Lync traffic Lync guests should leverage VM Queuing Delays in NIC throughput can negatively affect real time traffic quality

Network Component Description

IPsec Offload QoS Minimum Bandwidth

Recommend Impact to Lync

Certain NICs support IPsec offload from the CPU Yes Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 includes a feature called “Fair Share” which ensures guests have a minimum amount of network bandwidth Yes Offloads CPU processing to NICs with sufficient capability to perform IPsec encryption Lync guests can ensure appropriate bandwidth.

Virtual NICs 1GB NICs 10GB NICs – See Guidance NIC teaming is supported on the physical host.

10Gb NICs should be evaluated when feasible.

Large Application Sharing sessions cause large network bursts during initial content upload and/or large screen refreshes (such as complex PPT transitions).

1GB NICs

• A physical host MUST have a minimum of 1 NIC dedicated to virtual machines • A physical host MUST have a minimum of 1 NIC dedicated to physical host communications. • Additional dedicated physical NICs may be required when hosting large Application Sharing / AV conferences.

10GB NICs

• Evaluate VLANs to segment traffic as required • Multiple NICs likely not required if the throughput is available • Do not enable the management / OS to share the NIC with the guest

Processor Component Description

Hypervisor Overhead Stress / Performance Testing Physical hosts running a hypervisor incur a processor overhead for the hypervisor code Running Lync guests on a shared environment can incur a performance impact to either/both Lync and other guests

Recommend Impact to Lync

N/A Yes Size the physical host to include the guests + hypervisor overhead Run the Lync stress test tools to validate the virtualization guests have been sized properly

Memory Component

Memory Oversubscription

Description

Hypervisors can oversubscribe physical RAM between the virtual guest

Recommend Impact to Lync

No Lync guests should not be on a hypervisor host that has memory oversubscription enabled

Storage Component Description

File Format Guests can have multiple different partition types Disk Types Storage Mobility Data De duplication Hypervisors can have dynamically expanding, fixed size, or pass through disks Hypervisors can support an option for storage mobility Hypervisors and Windows 2012 can support native data de-dupe

Recommend Impact to Lync

NTFS Fixed Size or pass through disks No No Lync guests should be formatted with NTFS Dynamically expanding disks incur overhead when expanding which can negatively impact performance.

Can negatively impact Lync performance Can negatively impact Lync performance

Storage Component Description

Quick Migration / Live Migration Hypervisors allow guests to be moved live between hosts Host OS Software Auto Tuning Some hypervisors support software installation in the root partition Some hypervisors have auto-tuning capabilities for dynamic memory, storage, and rebalancing.

Recommend Impact to Lync

No No No Can negatively impact the real time media experience, load balancing, and other aspects Can negatively impact Lync performance Can introduce functionality that is not supported for Lync guests.

Users 10000 20000 30000

40000

50000 60000 70000 Std 12 16 22

26

30 36 40 Ent 20 20 24

26

26 30 32

20 12

10000

Standard vs. Enterprise Servers Required 30 26 36 30 20 16

20000 30000 40000 Std Ent 50000 60000

40 32

70000

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj205079.aspx

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Planning Tool

Planning tool A step-by-step tool to plan and design all the Lync infrastructure including hardware sizing with the user models

New Supported Features

High Availability & Disaster Recovery IPv6 Mobility Exchange Unified Messaging Exchange 2013 Preview Archiving Integration Persistent Chat XMPP federation Media Bypass Multi-view & HD Conferencing Voice applications (Call park, Response Groups)

Topology Builder

Support for Lync 2013 topology Support for the new features Persistent Chat Office Web Apps High Availability and Disaster Recovery Paired Pools SQL Mirroring Merge and manage Lync 2010 topology M:N Routing – Trunks IPv6 XMPP 36 Legacy Topology Builder should be retired

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2013 http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/

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Download both Exchange Server 2013 and Lync Server 2013 and try in your own environment Trial Exchange and Lync Online Contact your Microsoft or Partner Account Manager to arrange a time test drive Exchange and Lync in one of our Customer Immersion Experience Centres Contact your Microsoft or Partner Account Manager to get a Lync business value assessment or an Exchange and Lync technical briefing