Lync 2010 – Deploy First Standard Edition Server Option?

General Information

When you’re first installing Lync Server 2010, there’s some confusion out there as to why you would or wouldn’t choose the option, “Deploy First Standard Edition Server” option.  Every Lync 2010 Server in your deployment will hold a copy of your Lync Server 2010’s topology configuration called the Central Management Store (CMS).  These copies are located in a SQL 2008 Express instance called rtclocal on each Lync Server 2010 Server.  A very good post on the CMS can be read here.  The purpose of this article is not to explain what the CMS is, but how you go about utilizing the setup process of Lync to deploy the CMS if your first pool is a Standard Edition Server or an Enterprise Pool.

To help understand the difference, I wanted to preface the remainder of my post with a couple images that were taken from Jen’s excellent CMS post which I linked to in the above paragraph.

This first image shows how the CMS database is placed in the first Enterprise Edition Pool.  With this setup, we can see we have two Front End Servers (FE1 and FE2) which are collocated within the same Enterprise Pool.  Each of these servers have SQL 2008 Express which contain the rtclocal instance that contains a copy of the Master CS on the BE SQL Server which would be a SQL Standard or SQL Enterprise. A key thing to note here, is that the SQL BE Server has only one instance called rtc.  From a CMS standpoint, this rtc instance contains the master xds database.  The xds database is the cms database.  This rtc instance also holds your other Lync databases: cpsdyn, lis, rgsconfig, rgsdyn, rtc, rtcdyn, rtcab, rtcab1, and rtcdyn.

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This second image shows how the CMS database is placed in the first Standard Edition Server.  The key difference here, is we can see that on this first Standard Edition Server, we see two instances; rtclocal and rtc.  We can see, that because we do not have a dedicated BE server as we would in an Enterprise Edition Server, we collocate that dedicated rtc instance on the SE Server which will hold the same databases that the rtc instance would on the first Enterprise Edition Pool; the master xds database, cpsdyn, lis, rgsconfig, rgsdyn, rtc, rtcdyn, rtcab, rtcab1, and rtcdyn.  But this SE Server will also have the same rtclocal instance that Enterprise Edition FE Servers would have that would contain a copy of the xds instance.  Because of this, from a CMS standpoint, the first SE Server would contain two instances; one with the master xds and one with the replica xds.  Any subsequent Standard Edition Front End Servers (and any other Lync Server 2010 Server in the environment) would only have the rtclocal database holding a copy of the master xds as there can only be one Pool (Standard Edition Pool or Enterprise Edition Pool) that can hold the master CMS role.

It is possible, however, to move the CMS Master role to a new pool after the fact in case you deployed a Standard Edition Front End first such as a Pilot and then later deploy Enterprise Edition Pools such as when determining the pilot is a success and going full production. A very good blog article that explains this process can be read here.

Let’s take a look at how we accomplish the setup if our first Front End will be a Standard Edition and how it differentiates with an Enterprise Edition Front End.

Standard Edition Setup

Now when running setup.exe for Lync Server 2010, one of the deployment options you can see is “Prepare first Standard Edition Server.”

You will only want to run this option when you are deployment the first Lync Server 2010 Standard Edition Server in your deployment and you don’t already have any Lync Server 2010 Enterprise Edition Front End Servers.

What the Prepare first Standard Edition server does is simple.  It creates the rtc instance if it does not exist already and it creates the xds master database within the rtc instance.  This creates a Service Connection Point (SCP) record in Active Directory that allows any future deployment options to know how to locate the CMS information.  Taken from Jen’s blog article, “The SCP is an object in Active Directory created under the path of the following Distinguish Name (DN), CN=Topology Settings, CN=RTC Service,DC=<domain>, of type msRTCSIP-GlobalTopologySetting. This object contains the msRTCSIP-BackEndServer attribute, which specifies the FQDN of the master and the instance name of the SQL Instance. All tools use the SCP to locate and connect to the CMS master.”

If you ever wondered how the Topology Builder automatically knows how to find and download Topology Information, the Topology Builder queries this SCP record, uses the msRTCSIP-BackEndServer attribute, contacts the FQDN of the master, and downloads the topology information.

Now because the rtc instance has been created with the xds database, when you go to run the actual install, you will see “Install Local Configuration Store” which will install the rtclocal instance which contain a copy of the master xds database.  The regular databases will still be installed in the rtc instance.

Enterprise Edition Setup (Read the Standard Edition section first to fully understand this section)

Now when deploying the first pool in your Lync Server 2010 deployment happens to be an Enterprise Edition Pool, you won’t bother with the “Prepare first Standard Edition server” option. When taking a look at the first Standard Edition Front End, you can see we needed to create the rtc instance first with the master xds.  The same thing happens with the Enterprise Edition but in a different fashion.  Because this is an Enterprise Edition Pool, you will be using a SQL Standard or SQL Enterprise.  During the Topology Builder process, you need to define your SQL Server unlike a Standard Edition Deployment.  When publishing your Enterprise Edition Pool, at that time your rtc instance is being created on your SQL Server as well as the xds database.  Just like with the Standard Edition deployment, the SCP record in AD is getting created.

Now when running the Setup below and choosing “Install Local Configuration Store,” the Setup Process is creating the rtclocal instance (SQL  2008 Express) local to that Enterprise Edition Front End Server and then goes out to the master xds database that is on the SQL Standard or SQL Enterprise Server, and then creates a copy of that xds database on the Enterprise Edition Front End Server.