As more and more companies are deploying the unified communications product suite from Microsoft, 2011 will be a good time to master Lync 2010.
With that in view, following are the AD requirements for installing Lync.
- All domain controllers should be running Windows 2003 (32 or 64bit) or higher.
- Forest & domain functional level should be Windows 2003 native mode or higher.
- 2003 mixed mode is not supported.
- Atleast one GC should be available in each domain where you deploy Lync server.
AD schema has to be updated before Lync server can be installed. The pre-requisites are Lync Server Core components (which includes Lync Shell), .NET Framework 3.5.1 with SP1 & Remote server administration tools. IIS 7 features are required at a later stage and hence it is better to install all of these together in one go (with a single server restart).
Hence, run the following from an elevated PowerShell window to prepare your server to install Lync & update AD schema.
Import-Module ServerManager
Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Redirect,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Net-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Log-Libraries,Web-Http-Tracing,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Client-Auth,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-Scripting-Tools –Restart
If you are installing Lync on a 2008 SP2 Server, Powershell 2.0 has to be installed as well.
Preparing the schema, forest & domain are part of the Lync 2010 Deployment Wizard, which makes the process easier.
