Planning Your Archiving Topology

In Lync Server 2010, archiving consists of three components:

• Archiving agents—These agents are automatically installed on every Front End pool and Standard Edition server. The agent captures messages for archiving and sends them to the destination queue on the Archiving Server. Although the agent is always present, it only acts when an archiving policy is enabled.

• Archiving Server—This is the server role that reads the messages sent by the archiving agents and writes these messages to the Archiving back end database.

• Archiving Server back end database—This is the SQL server that stores the archived messages. This database can be collocated on the same computer as the Archiving Server or can be on a dedicated system if scalability is an issue.

There are three typical topologies for deploying archiving, as shown in Figure 26.2.

Figure 26.2 Typical Topologies for Deploying Archiving

The Archiving Server can be collocated with a Monitoring Server, with a SQL store of a Front End pool, or with a file store of a Front End pool. The Archiving database can also be collocated on the same computer that runs Archiving Server or the computer that runs Monitoring Server.

Regardless of which topology is chosen, there are some common requirements that should be planned. In addition to the normal requirements for Lync Server 2010 in terms of supported versions of Windows, also ensure that a valid version of SQL is used. The Archiving Server is compatible with the following versions of SQL:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP1 Enterprise Edition

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP1 Standard Edition (x64)

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3 Enterprise Edition

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3 Standard Edition (x64)

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express (x64) only when used on Standard Edition Lync Server 2010

In addition, the Archiving Server needs Message Queuing installed with Active Directory Integration enabled. This requirement is applicable to any Front End or Standard Edition Lync Server 2010 systems that host users who have archiving enabled.

From a scaling perspective, support as many as 500,000 users on a single dedicated Archiving Server. For environments with fewer than 500,000 users and multiple Front End pools, deploy a centralized Archiving Server unless unusual network constraints exist. It is also recommended to validate a topology with the legal department to ensure that there are no issues with holding archived communications from one country to another. Some localized privacy laws might affect the capability to deploy a centralized Archiving Server.

To optimize performance on the Archiving Server, plan to deploy three physical disk groups to hold the following information:

• System files and Message Queuing files

• Archiving Server database data file

• Archiving Server database log file

Based on the typical Lync Server 2010 user model, anticipate around 49 KB of data per day per user. Based on this, database sizing can be approximated as the following:

DB size = (DB growth per day per user) * (number of users) * (number of days)

For example, with a deployment to 10,000 users that will archive data for 60 days, anticipated database size is the following for a DB size of 28 GB:

DB size = (49 KB) * (10,000) * (60)

If an organization varies significantly from the average Lync user model, adjust the growth estimate accordingly.