Lync 2010 Deployment Guide (working with Topology Builder)

When we start Topology Builder for first time, by default, we will be offered to “Download Topology from existing deployment”, which of course is not possible, since we will now begin to build one…

Toggle “New Topology” and lets the fun begin.

Now we have to give a name of our locally stored .tbxml file. I always use today’s date, for example 02272011.tbxml

We are now presented with the first screen – “Define the primary domain”. I will use drago.local as Primary…

…and enter my public domain (drago.ws) as “Additional supported domain” on the next screen.

Name your fist site and give it a description.

…and fill in the next screen accordingly.

Click Finish.

We will now define our first Pool.

Here we will enter the FQDN of our server (fe.drago.local) and make sure “Standard Edition Server” is toggled.

This server will have all roles collocated and so, all boxes will be checked.

We will also collocate the Mediation role…

Here we will leave all options un-cheeked since for now we will not deploy Archiving and Monitoring and also our Edge is not ready yet for deployment.

As you can see below, we cannot make changes here since we are deploying our first server and furthermore it is a Standard Edition…

Do pay attention on this screen. Lync requires a file share to store some information and… share it with the other servers in our deployment. While we specify the name of the share, Deployment Wizard will NOT create it for us. At this point, I will create it just so I will not forget later.

The term “External Web Services URL” could be misleading for someone. External only means our Reverse Proxy will forward EXTERNAL requests to this URL (which is served form the Lync server and will never be exposed DIRECTLY to internet. Anyway, I will enter “fewebext.drago.local” for more clarity later when we get to TMG.

While we decided to have collocated Mediation role on our Lync server, not much can be done here right now, so I will leave it as it is. Well… the truth is – this is a lab and I can afford myself the freedom of “will think about it later”. The best practices, however, requires days and weeks of preparation, double checking every decision and writing it down for further reference…

When we are done, we will be presented with this screen – a summary of what have do ne so far.

As we can see, the “Administrative access URL” have not been defined – it is up to us if we want one. I do.


With Lync Server 2010 selected, click “Edit Properties” in the Actions pane.
 
 

Click “Simple URLs” on left and enter something meaningful in the field.

Notice that our “Central Management Server” is not specified… yet.

Click Edit Properties again, scroll all the way down and select the only available option (remember – we ran Prepare First Standard Edition Server” earlier) and so, the CMS was prepared at this point.

Now the big moment – we will publish out Topology for first time. Click “Publish topology” in Actions pane on right.

Rejoice once again! I feel really lucky thus far. It is so nice to see all green checkmarks. Last thing is to see “to do list”.

Needless to say, I simply love this reminder.