Database Topologies

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will reach end of support on January 9, 2018. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

Office Communications Server 2007 has two database roles. A Back-End Database is required. An archiving database is required only if you deploy an Archiving and CDR.

Supported database management systems are as follows:

  • Standard Edition. Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition supports only Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 SP2 Express Edition for the Back-End Database. If SQL Server Express is not already installed, the Office Communications Server 2007 setup program will install it during deployment of the Front End Server.

  • Enterprise Edition. Any Enterprise pool Back-End Database or Archiving and CDR Server supports the following database management systems:

    • SQL Server 2005 SP2 Enterprise Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit

    • SQL Server 2005 SP1 Enterprise Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit

    • SQL Server 2000 SP4 Enterprise Edition

    • SQL Server 2005 SP2 Standard Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit

    • SQL Server 2005 SP1 Standard Edition, 32-bit or 64-bit

    • SQL Server 2000 SP4 Standard Edition

Note

The database for the Archiving and CDR Server requires a supported version of SQL Server even if the database is collocated with a Standard Edition server.

Back-End Database

In a Standard Edition deployment, all server roles, including the Back-End Database, are collocated on a single computer. In an Enterprise Edition deployment, the Back-End Database server cannot be collocated with any other server role in a pool.

Both the consolidated topology and the expanded topology support the following Back-End Database configurations:

  • One Front End Server without a load balancer and one Back-End Database on a separate computer without a load balancer.

  • One Front End Server behind a hardware load balancer and one Back-End Database on a separate computer without a load balancer.

  • Two or more Front End Servers behind a hardware load balancer and one Back-End Database server on a separate computer without a load balancer.

  • For an Enterprise pool, the Back-End Database server can be a single SQL Server computer. Two or more dedicated SQL Server computers can optionally be clustered in a two-node active/passive configuration. A SQL Server cluster for the Back-End Database improves availability by providing failover capabilities.

If there is more than one SQL Server instance, an Enterprise pool can use either the default or the non-default instance.

The server that is running a Back-End Database or an Archiving database can host other SQL applications, as long as they are hosted in different SQL instances. The SQL Server instance that hosts the Office Communications Server database must be dedicated.

If you are going to run other SQL applications on the same server as your Office Communications Server database, keep the following in mind:

  • The Office Communications Server database must have separate physical disks for its databases and for its transaction logs.

  • The server must have enough RAM to cache the entire instance being used by Office Communications Server.

  • With this configuration, diagnosing performance issues will be more difficult.

  • This configuration is supported, but not recommended.

You can back up and restore a SQL Server 2000 database or a SQL Server 2005 database by using the two-site spare pool data restoration scenario. For details, see the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Backup and Restoration Guide.

Communicator Web Access

Communicator Web Access requires a database, but its database is not a server role. For details about the Communicator Web Access database, see Communicator Web Access Database later in this guide, in Communicator Web Access.

Archiving Database

The Archiving and CDR Server is an optional server role for both Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. It consists of the Archiving and CDR service and a SQL Server database, which is called the archiving database. For details, see "Step 12: Planning for Compliance and Usage Analysis" in the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Planning Guide and the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Archiving and CDR Server Deployment Guide.

If you deploy an archiving database, you can choose between two topologies:

  • Collocate the Archiving and CDR service with the archiving database on a single computer.

  • Install the Archiving and CDR service and the archiving database on separate computers.

    Note

    Collocation of the archiving database is supported on both Standard Edition servers and Enterprise Edition Front End Servers; however, we do not recommend collocation on Standard Edition servers because of the potential impact on performance. Collocation of the Archiving and CDR Database with the Back-End Database for an Enterprise Pool is not supported.

As a variation of either topology, Office Communications Server 2007 supports multiple Archiving and CDR Servers that connect to the same archiving database.

Software-level disk mirroring, such as the dynamic disk management functionality in Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003, is not supported for the archiving database. Only a single-disk configuration or hardware-level redundancy, such as a RAID configuration, is supported. For details about supported archiving configurations, see the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007Archiving and CDR Server Deployment Guide.