More Coffee Anyone?

OCS 2007 R2: Standard Edition Pool?

Lately I had a few customers who have been asking about saving some money when it comes to deploying OCS 2007 R2. I got asked on more than one occasion why more than OCS 2007 R2 Standard Edition cannot be used in the same Front End pool. Here’s why: the OCS 2007 R2 Supportability Guide states that the only supported configuration for Standard Edition is one where the default implementation installs a SQL Express 2005 database on the Standard Edition server.

Supported Back-End Server Database

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 is bundled with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with SP2 (32-bit).

This means that the user configuration for OCS is installed locally on each server. This information is not shared between servers. If you install two Standard Edition Servers in a Front End pool, the hardware load balancer (HLB) (which is required for OCS pools that contain more than one Front End server) will not know which Front End server the user is homed on. If a user logs on and is directed to (from the HLB) the Front End server that is not the user’s home, they will not be able to logon. This is not clearly documented in any of the OCS 2007 R2 guides but it is inferred.

February 26, 2010 Posted by ivorb | OCS 2007 R2 | OCS R2 Standard Edition Pool | Leave a Comment