Best Practices

The following are the best practices from this chapter:

• Leverage the Monitoring reports to keep a close eye on the overall and ongoing health of your deployment and to troubleshoot user-experience quality issues.

• Although the Lync Server 2013 Control Panel might seem more familiar at first, there are many functions that can be accomplished only in the Management Shell.

• For larger deployments, use a dedicated SQL Reporting Services Server.

• Before running the DeployReports.ps1 script, ensure that the group you specify for Read Only access already exists in Active Directory.

• Always publish a new topology before making changes or installing a new server role.

• Test your SQL Reporting Services deployment before loading the Monitoring Server Report Pack.

• New reports are often included in Lync cumulative updates. Be sure to redeploy the Monitoring reports following the same process as you did initially to add the new or updated reports.

• Leverage the Archiving Server to record messages for key employees.

• Be sure to understand compliance regulations around archiving that you might need to follow in Lync Server 2013.

• For some larger deployments, a dedicated Archiving Server per pool might be required.

• For larger deployments, use a dedicated SQL Archiving Server.

• When possible, perform your configurations through the Management Shell to simplify bulk tasks and keep a record of what changes were made.

• Make sure you have enough storage to maintain the Archive for the expected period.

• Be aware of any existing retention policies that might conflict with your plans for archiving in Lync Server 2013.