Lync 2010 Deployment Guide

Sometimes I consider myself “the luckiest man alive” for at least two reasons -  I am married for the same woman for 25 years (and still in love as I was the day I met her on a bus station) and…  because I have never experienced most or any of the problems other UC enthusiasts have had and requested help from the Lync community (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/ocs). I almost feel obligated to do once again a complete Lync 2010 installation, while taking a screenshots and inserting my comments with hope others can use it as a guide and/or point of reference.
Because I have more confidence in my Lync knowledge than English language skills, any comments will be greatly appreciated.

While I am waiting “Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, and Web with Service Pack 1) installation media to download from TechNet, let’s talk about what is that we want to achieve.

I have public domain “drago.ws”. I am planning to install new domain controller on my virtual host machine “dc01.drago.local” where Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 will be used as OS (this is, to see the possible impact, if any) Service pack one will have on our future Lync 2010 installation.
Because I have never done installation of “split domain” environment, this will be a good learning curve for me as well – I will learn how to do it and the final result will be published here. Also, I will “play” with two scenarios – using singe IP address for the public Edge interface and later – three separate IP addresses (NAT will be used in both, since direct public routable IP address setup cannot be easier and straightforward).

Here is our table:





My domain controller will also be my Domain Certificate Authority for drago.local domain.

Step 1 – Prepare Active Directory Forest for Lync 2010
Step 2 - Prepare our first Lync Server for deployment
Step 3 - Before we start Topology Buider