Topic Last Modified: 2010-12-06

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 introduces DNS load balancing, a software solution that can greatly reduce the administration overhead for configuring load balancing on your network.

DNS load balancing balances the network traffic that is unique to Lync Server 2010, such as SIP traffic and media traffic. Although you will still need hardware load balancers for your server pools, their setup and administration will be primarily for HTTP traffic, which the administrators of hardware load balancers are accustomed to.

If you choose to deploy DNS load balancing, your organization’s administration overhead for hardware load balancers will be greatly reduced. Additionally, complex troubleshooting of issues related to misconfiguration of load balancers for SIP traffic will be eliminated. DNS load balancing also ensures that hardware load balancer issues do not affect such elements of SIP traffic as the basic routing of calls.

Using DNS load balancing may also enable you to purchase lower-cost hardware load balancers than if you used the hardware load balancers for all types of traffic. You should still make sure to use load balancers that have passed interoperability qualification testing with Lync Server 2010. For details about load balancers that have passed interoperability testing, see "Lync Server 2010 Load Balancer Partners" at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=202452.

DNS load balancing is supported for Front End pools, Edge Server pools, Mediation Server pools, and Director pools.

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