We are pleased to announce official support for server virtualization for Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

We are introducing support for both a fully distributed virtualized topology across several hypervisors and for a single server virtualized topology. These topologies are supported on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and any Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) certified partner solution (http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm).

Presence, Instant Messaging (including remote access, federation, and Public IM Connectivity) and Group Chat workloads are supported. The following server roles can be deployed:

· Front-End Servers

· Back-End SQL Server 2008 64 bits

· Group Chat Channel Servers

· Group Chat Compliance Servers

· Edge Access Servers

The virtual machines must be running on Windows Server 2008 64 bits.  Archiving Server and Monitoring Server (CDR Only) can be connected to a virtualized Enterprise pool, but they must run on a physical server.

The fully virtualized distributed topology has been tested to handle up to 40,000 users, including 10,000 group chat users.

Virtualization of the other workloads is not supported because of possible quality issues with real-time media. Specifically, voice, video, live meeting and desktop sharing workloads cannot be part of the virtualized deployment. Therefore audio/video/web conferencing servers, audio/video/web edge conferencing servers, dial-in conferencing, Communicator Web Access, enterprise voice, or Remote Call Control may not be deployed as part of the virtualized pool. If any one of these workloads is required, a new pool with physical servers must be deployed for those users. For more information about support for client virtualization technologies, please refer to the official support statement at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951152.

In order to plan both their physical and virtualized topologies, customers can use Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool, which can simulate user load for the available workloads. This will help customers validating the hypervisor load and scalability before going to production.

Along with this announcement, a whitepaper detailing the tested architecture, performance, use of the Capacity Planning Tool, and a methodology to select a successful architecture can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a45d921-3b48-44e4-b42b-19704a2b81b0

Jerome Berniere