Monitoring

A key factor in determining the success of an audio and video deployment is insight into how the system performs for the end users. Lync Server provides out-of-the-box monitoring capabilities with the Monitoring function. Like Lync Archiving, the Monitoring function is also now collocated on all the front-end servers for a pool. When deployed, endpoints submit reports when completing an audio or video call, which are then stored in SQL databases dedicated to call records and monitoring data.

Two types of reports are collected. One report, referred to as call detail records (CDR), contains information about when the call occurred and what endpoints were involved. The other is a Quality of Experience (QoE) report that contains comprehensive data, including the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of various components, which indicates the call quality in both directions. These reports also identify which subnet the endpoints used so that administrators can quickly isolate any issues to a specific device or network segment.

Lync Server also supports synthetic transactions that are PowerShell cmdlets an administrator can run, which simulate actions taken by users against the server. Examples of these transactions are a user signing in, two users sending IM messages to each other, and a test audio call between two endpoints. These synthetic transactions can be used to test user functionality systemwide on a recurring basis or in conjunction with the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager management pack for Lync Server, which includes support for the transactions.