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Technical Requirements for Archiving

 

Topic Last Modified: 2011-01-31

Archiving requirements include the following:

  • Prerequisite software that must be installed for Archiving Servers.

  • Scaling considerations and requirements for your archiving deployment.

Archiving Server Prerequisites

Before deploying Archiving Server, you must install the following software:

  • The Windows operating system and required Windows updates on supported hardware for each server on which you want to deploy archiving components, including the Archiving Server, archiving database, and archiving file share. For details about the hardware and software requirements for Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and database servers, see Determining Your System Requirements in the Planning documentation.

  • Software prerequisites for all servers running Lync Server 2010, including Microsoft .NET 3.5 with SP1, the Visual C++ Redistributable, Visual J# Redistributable, URL Rewrite Module version 2.0 Redistributable, Windows Media Format Runtime, Windows PowerShell command-line interface version 2.0, and Windows Installer version 4.5. For details, see Additional Software Requirements in the Planning documentation.

  • Message Queuing, with Active Directory Integration enabled, on the server running Archiving Server and on each Front End Server and Standard Edition server that hosts users who will have instant messaging (IM) archived. For details about Message Queuing requirements, see Additional Software Requirements in the Planning documentation.

  • SQL Server on the computer that will host the archiving database. For details about supported versions, see Database Software and Clustering Support in the Supportability documentation.

Additionally, file storage should be available for the archiving file store.

Scaling

When you deploy Archiving Server, you associate it with one or more Front End pools (and Survivable Branch Appliances). Archiving Server then collects IM message content and conferencing content from conversations involving the users homed there.

For best scalability, do not collocate Archiving Server with another server role or collocate the Archiving database with other databases.

A single Archiving Server can serve up to 500,000 users. If you have multiple pools that total less than 500,000 users, we recommend that you associate all these pools with a single Archiving Server, to simplify administration and data retrieval.

If archiving is mission-critical for your organization, you should configure Lync Server to block functionality if archiving fails. If you enable blocking, blocking will only be applied to the failed workload. For example, if the failure only affects conferencing, conferencing will be blocked until the problem is resolved, but other workloads, such as Enterprise Voice, are not blocked.

Archiving Database Performance

For optimal performance, we recommend that you put these files on three physical disks:

  • System file and Message Queuing file on the same physical disk

  • Archiving Server database data file

  • Archiving Server database log file

If you collocate the Archiving Server databases with other databases on the same server, you should run the Archiving Server database in a separate instance from other databases. Additionally, you should put the Archiving Server database data files and log files on separate physical disks, for optimal performance. You should carefully evaluate performance impacts before deciding to collocate the Archiving Server database with other databases.

Archiving Database Size

Based on the Lync Server user model, the Archiving database grows 49 KB per user per day. For details about the user model, see Lync Server 2010 User Models in the Planning documentation. To get an estimate of your database size, use this formula:

Database size = (DB growth per user per day) * (Number of users) * (Number of days)

For example, 15 days of data in the Archiving database for 50,000 users would be 49*50000*15 for a total of 35 gigabytes (GB). If your organization’s IM use differs significantly from the user model, adjust the daily database growth estimate.

You can use this formula, along with the knowledge of your organization’s compliance needs and available disk space on the Archiving database servers, to help decide how many days of data to keep on your database. By default, archiving data is purged every 14 days if purging is enabled.