Collocation

The Edge Server roles cannot be collocated with any other role in Lync Server. Although many of the other roles depend on access to Active Directory, Edge Servers are typically placed in a perimeter network and might not even be joined to the corporate domain for security reasons.

In previous versions of Office Communications Server, it was possible to install only specific Edge roles. However, in Lync Server 2010, all Edge roles were consolidated on a single server. This change cut down on confusion of deployment models, which required knowing which Edge roles were safe to collocate together. This has carried through to Lync Server 2013; you must not collocate the Edge Server with any other Lync Server role, and all Lync Edge Services are installed together on a single server.