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Dean Suzuki Blog

Title: Building a Lync 2013 Persistent Chat Server

Created: 1/8/2013

Description:

Persistent Chat is a capability where you can create chat rooms that contain IM content that

persists over time. This capability was called Group Chat in Lync 2010. Also in Lync 2010,

Group Chat required a separate client. In Lync 2013, the Persistent Chat capabilities are built

into the Lync 2013 client so users don’t need to load two clients.

Some key scenarios that have used this capability in the past were:

Help Desk scenarios: In this scenario, a chat room is created for each software

application or hardware devices that users could call in on. Help Desk technicians can

post questions to the appropriate channel and get help and/or search through the prior

chat history to check if a solution to the problem may have been posted in the past.

Financial trading companies: In this scenario, a chat room is created per stock or

financial instrument. Researchers or analysts could post news or updates on this stock

to the channel. Thus when the next shift’s investment team came in, they could search

the prior chat room history to see any updates on the investment and get caught up.

Some sizing guidelines

Each persistent chat server can support up to 20,000 connected users

A persistent chat pool can contain up to 4 persistent chat servers

Thus, pool of 4 persistent chat servers could support up to 80,000 connected users.

(from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398372.aspx)

An important note is that you “cannot add additional servers to a Persistent Chat Server pool

that is started as a single-server deployment in Topology Builder. We recommend using the

multiple-server pool topology, even if you’re using a single server, so that you’ll be able to add

more servers later, if needed.” (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg615006.aspx)

Hardware recommendations for Persistent Chat server are:

Dual 6-core processors

32GB RAM

8 or more 10K RPM disks

o RAID1 set (2 disks)

o RAID10 set (6 disks)

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Taken from: (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398835.aspx)

Persistent Chat server uses SQL 2012 for the back-end database server.

References:

http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/lync-2013/lync-server-2013-persistent-chat-144770 ;

Background on Persistent Chat

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398381(v=ocs.15).aspx ; Lync 2013 Persistent Chat

Planning Documentation

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj205357.aspx ; Lync 2013 Persistent Chat

Deployment Documentation

Disclaimer:

Contents of this blog and article represent the opinions of Dean Suzuki, and do not reflect the

views of my employer. (C) 2012 Dean Suzuki, All Rights Reserved

Procedure:

Table of Contents 1 Create Persistent Chat VM: ................................................................................................................ 3

2 Prepare Lync Persistent Chat Server - Load Operating System Pre-requisites .......................... 3

3 Adding Persistent Chat Server to the Lync Topology .................................................................... 7

4 Publish the topology. .......................................................................................................................... 10

5 Install the Persistent Chat Server .................................................................................................... 12

5.1 Install the Local Configuration Store ........................................................................................... 13

5.2 Install the Lync Persistent Chat Server Components .................................................................. 14

5.3 Request and Assign the Server Certificates ................................................................................ 16

5.4 Start the Lync Persistent Chat Services ....................................................................................... 22

5.5 Perform A Microsoft Update ...................................................................................................... 24

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1 Create Persistent Chat VM: The Persistent Chat server will run on Windows 2012.

Create a new virtual machine for the remote app server.

See the earlier posts for building a base Windows 2012 VM.

Set the IP address of the server

Change the name of the server

Join the server to the domain.

Persistent Chat requires SQL 2012 on the backend database.

2 Prepare Lync Persistent Chat Server - Load Operating System

Pre-requisites According to the Persistent Chat documentation, the PC server has the same pre-requistes as a

Lync 2013 front end server (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj204856.aspx)

See the following article for Lync 2013 pre-requisites: http://technet.microsoft.com/e8103.aspx

Review for pre-reqs: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398686.aspx

Lync requires Windows PowerShell 3.0 and .NET Framework 4.5

I checked the base install of Windows 2012 server and both are already installed.

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Need to add HTTP Activation

The following are added by the setup.

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Add Windows Identity Foundation 3.5

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Documents said to load Windows Desktop Experience ; only found Media Foundation

Persistent Chat requires that we add Messaging Queuing (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-

us/library/gg398686.aspx)

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Next, we need to add the IIS components (from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-

us/library/gg398686.aspx):

Add-WindowsFeature RSAT-ADDS, Web-Server, Web-Static-Content, Web-Default-Doc, Web-Http-Errors,

Web-Asp-Net, Web-Net-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Log-Libraries,

Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-

Filtering, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Dyn-Compression, NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45, Web-Asp-Net45,

Web-Mgmt-Tools, Web-Scripting-Tools, Web-Mgmt-Compat, Desktop-Experience, Telnet-Client, BITS -

Source D:\sources\sxs

3 Adding Persistent Chat Server to the Lync Topology Go to the Lync server that has the Lync Topology Builder

See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj205049.aspx for more details.

Go to Persistent Chat pools and right click and select “New Persistent Chat Pool”

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Select “Multiple computer pool”. Note, if you select a Single Computer pool, you won’t be able

to add another server to the pool. It is better to start with a multiple computer pool, even if

you only have one server so that you leave the door open to adding additional servers to the

pool in the future.

Specify the server that we are building for persistent chat.

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4 Publish the topology.

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5 Install the Persistent Chat Server Go to the pchat server

Put lync 2013 dvd into drive

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5.1 Install the Local Configuration Store

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5.2 Install the Lync Persistent Chat Server Components

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5.3 Request and Assign the Server Certificates

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5.4 Start the Lync Persistent Chat Services

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5.5 Perform A Microsoft Update