As I’ve done with Lync 2010 and OCS 2007 R2 I’ve decided to write an article on how to deploy Lync 2013.  Like in previous years this will be a multi-part post, this being part 1.  However; unlike the previous articles I want to call out some things ahead of time:

• This article covers doing a Standard Edition deployment for a small or medium size deployment (under 5,000 users)
• I’ll cover having redundancy in the environment, it is assumed that this redundancy is provided by having a second location with equipment in it and an MPLS connection to the primary location.
• The redundancy focus is specifically around Lync functionality, I won’t be covering how to plan DR or HA for other services/servers
• It is assumed you will have PSTN and Internet connections at both locations
• This series will cover IM, Presence, Voice Resiliency, Conferencing, and Unified Messaging
• Because I don’t have enough subnets in my lab all servers will share the same subnet excluding edge.
• Edge servers will utilize 1 DMZ interface and 1 Internal interface (2 NICs).  If you are deploying this to your production environment both edge interfaces should be in separate DMZ subnets from each other and all Lync servers and clients.  I’ll cover this more in the Edge section of the article

We’ll begin with a quick overview on the deployment.  This is a lab deployment containing 2 domain controllers (1 per location), 2 Lync Standard Edition servers, and 2 Lync Edge servers.  All servers in this deployment are utilizing Server 2012.  An Active Directory domain named “ocsguy.local” will hold all user accounts and the public SIP and SMTP domain will be “ocsguy.us”.

For server hardware and software specs on Lync 2013 please review the specifications on technet here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398835(v=ocs.15).aspx

and

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398588(v=ocs.15).aspx

So now that all of that is out of the way, let’s start with the fun stuff.  I’ve downloaded the Lync 2013 RTM bits and placed them on what will be my first front end server (FE1.ocsguy.local).  I’ll being by logging into the Lync server with an account that is a member of “Domain Admins”, “Enterprise Admins” and “Schema Admins”.  Next I install the pre-reqs, I used the command below from an Administrative PowerShell window:

Add-WindowsFeature  MSMQ-Server,MSMQ-Directory,Web-Server,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Scripting-Tools,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Log-Libraries,Web-Http-Tracing,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Default-Doc,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Client-Auth,Web-Filtering,Web-Dyn-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Windows-Identity-Foundation,rsat-adds,telnet-client,net-wcf-http-activation45,net-wcf-msmq-activation45,Server-Media-Foundation

Once this completes, restart the server and then we can start the Lync install, we’ll start by going to the “Setup\amd64” directory on the install media and running setup.exe

As usual you will be prompted to install Visual C++, click Yes here (unless you don’t want to install Lync )

Once the install completes you will see the Core Components Installer, click Install here:

Next we’ll accept the EULA (make sure to read it) and click OK:

And away we go

Once this installer completes the “Lync Deployment Wizard” opens and the real fun begins.

I like to start by clicking “Install Administrative Tools”

Next I’ll click “Prepare Active Directory”.  I won’t bore you with all of those screen shots, you’ll just run steps 1, 3 and 5 – each one requires you to do a version of the well-known “Next, Next, Finish” dance.  The other steps are just waiting for replication.

Now before we go any further we’ll need to make our administrator account a member of the “CSAdministrators” and “RTCUniversalServerAdmins” groups:

For this to take effect we’ll need to signoff of the server and back on.

Once we’ve signed back in we’ll launch the “Lync Deployment Wizard” again and choose “Prepare First Standard Edition Server”- This time we only do the “Next, Finish” dance.

The wizard will take a few minutes to complete (you’ll notice it taking a while during the SQL parts).  It may be a good time to sip on more of that beverage or even get a refill.

Assuming you see “Complete” as shown in the screenshot above we can move on.

Next we’ll create a folder named “Share” on the C drive and share it out.  This will be used for our file share for this pool/server:

The default permissions will work for this as the Lync Topology Builder will update them with the appropriate settings when we publish our first topology.  Speaking of Topology Builder – now is the time to open it, since we have our shared folder ready we can start on our first topology.  When it opens click the radio button for “New Topology” and click “OK”

You’ll be prompted for a file name for the new topology file, I recommend using a descriptive name and storing all copies of topology in one place:

Now the “Create New Topology” wizard appears and we can start defining our topology, we’ll start with the primary sip domain “ocsguy.us”

We won’t be entering any other domains for this article so we can click next on the “Specify additional supported domains” box (Note – no screenshot shown for boxes that don’t require us to enter information).  Then we’ll define our site:

Specify the site details and click Next:

Now we’ll click “Finish”, notice the “Open the New Front End Wizard when this wizard closes” box is checked for us.

On the “Define the New Front End Pool” page we’ll click Next and be presented with options for our first pool.  Since we are deploying a Standard Edition pool select “Standard Edition Server” and put in the FQDN of our first Front End server (fe1.ocsguy.local) in the “FQDN” box and click Next

We’ll be enabling: Conferencing, Dial-in (PSTN) Conferencing, Enterprise Voce and Call Admission Control

We’ll leave the “Collocate Mediation Server” box check and click next (not shown)

For now we won’t be deploying edge so leave the “Enable an Edge Pool…” box unchecked and click Next (not shown)

SQL information is already populated for us so we can click Next (not shown)

Also, because we used the default file share name of “share” we can click next on the “Define the file store” screen (not shown).

Under Specify the Web Services URL I recommend using a different name than the server name under the “External Base URL” field.  I typically add “extws” for “external web service” to the pool name here, this was required when you were doing mobility in 2010 so I’ve stuck with this on the 2013 deployment.  Also, since our pool name is an internal domain, we’ll need to change that to an external FQDN, I’ve used “fe1extws.ocsguy.us”

For now we won’t be deploying an “Office Web Apps” server so uncheck that box and click “Finish”

Now we’re ready to publish our topology so we can choose Action>Topology>Publish in Topology Builder

A little more of the “Next,Next,Finish” will happen, notice that during the wizard we will see our Front End server “fe1.ocsguy.local” automatically selected as the “Central Management Server”

You’ll see a bunch of text in the “Publishing Topology” box, as long as there is no Red/Errors the topology will be published and we can open the to do list by clicking on the “Click here to open to-do list”.

Our “To-Do” list tells us to setup our simple URLs and run setup on our new server fe1.

We’ll start by running the Lync Deployment Wizard and choosing “Install or Update Lync Server System”

We’re going to run through steps 1 through 4 in order.  Choose “Run” under Step 1 (it will be the only one not greyed out).

On the “Install Local Configuration Store” screen we’ll leave the defaults and click Next

We’ll see the install text fly by again, slowing down for all the SQL services of course (good time to sip on some more of that beverage)

Once it completes click Finish

Now we can click “Run” under Step 2, click “Next” under “Setup Lync Server Components” and the next phase of the install begins.  This will take more than a few minutes so be patient…

Now on to Step 3, we’ll start by requesting the “Default Certificate” which is used for most of the Lync services

When prompted choose “Send the request immediately” and click Next, a CA from your environment should show up in the drop down on the next screen

If your CA is there click Next

You shouldn’t need to specify alternate credentials or alternate certificate templates (unless your organization has special requirements around this) so click Next 2 more times

Now give your certificate a friendly name, I like to make sure it is something meaniful like “FE1 Lync Pool Cert” and I usually mark the certificate key as exportable just in case I need it for troubleshooting later.

Now put in your organization info and location info (not shown)

Make sure to place a check next to your SIP domain in the “Configured SIP domains” box, this adds sip.ocsguy.us to our certificate

Finish through the wizard by pressing Next a few more times and the certificate will be requested

The next screen will allow you to assign the certificate you just requested (Make sure the “Assign this certificate” box is checked).  Couple more “Next, Next, Finish” presses and our certificate is assigned.

Next we’ll request our OAuth certificate, this will be used for server to server communication for things like Exchange and SharePoint.

For the friendly name I typically use something like “OAuth Cert”, something important to note: This certificate will replicate to all of your Lync servers, so you will only have to request it once.

Notice above the only name on the cert is the sip domain. All other fields you can leave defaults and your settings for organization and location will be populated from the last request.

Once the request completes we can assign it automatically just like we did with the last one.

Now we can run Step 4 to start our Lync services. This is another “Next, Finish” type of thing so I haven’t included screenshots.

Once the Service start completes you can open the Services console (services.msc) and verify everything start with “Lync” is running – “Lync Server Front-End” may take a few minutes to go from Starting to Running.  If it doesn’t start check your Event Viewer (eventvwr) for errors.

Now that the Lync install is complete we can move on to DNS.  For this portion of the deployment we will create the following A records in the internal copy of our “ocsguy.us” zone (Note these are the internal IPs and will only be used by internal clients):

A Record	IP Address
Sip.ocsguy.us	10.255.106.81
Meet.ocsguy.us	10.255.106.81
Dialin.ocsguy.us	10.255.106.81

We will also need to create the following SRV record:

This record will be used by our Lync clients for sign in.

Now that DNS is ready, we’ll head over to the Lync Control Panel and enable our first user.  You will likely be prompted to install SilverLight (if you hadn’t done so earlier).  If you already have Exchange deployed and an email address policy you can allow the SIP Uri for the user to be based on that, otherwise you’ll want to create the SIP Uri as I have below:

Last but not least, since everything is ready all that’s left to do is sign in from a domain joined machine.

Sign in is now complete and we can call it a day.  Check back next week for part 2, adding our second front end server and configuring pairing.

H/T to Pat Richard for pointing out a typo above.