Communications Server 14 News

I just read this useful blog about how Communications Server "14" provides Site Resiliency. The new component means you can protect against site failures and offer multiple user locations.

- Small or medium sized remote offices where a Survivable Branch Appliance is installed are defined as a Branch Site. For these clients there is another pool in a central site in the event that the SBA fails. However, the SBA is simply a Registrar and not a full pool

- Main offices and data centers with full Communications Server "14" deployments are defined as a Central Site.

Each Enterprise VoIP enabled user is associated with a primary site and secondary backup site. This is done automatically or by registering with the primary site.

Meanwhile the Registrar service handles Communicator connections and end-point login to Communications Server "14". The Registrar is found in the Frond-End server role.

In the event that the primary host is unreachable, then Communications Server "14" end-points can perform automatic SRV lookup and leverage multiple responses. This gives clients the ability to look for services on another host.

The feature provides highly-available services to users with the back-up of disaster recovery protection or a secondary pool in the same site.

In the event of a major failure such as as WAN outage, users will remain signed in to their Communicator client.
But they can only access Enterprise Voice features and peer-to-peer communications between users in the office that is affected by the outage.