See Also
Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat enables users to engage in persistent, ongoing IM conversations. For details about Group Chat features, see New Group Chat Feature.
The minimum configuration and simplest deployment for Group Chat is a single-server topology, which includes the following computers:
- A single Group Chat Server running the following three server
roles:
-
Lookup service. The Lookup service provides the chat room
address, distributes sessions to Channel Servers, and in
multiple-server topologies manages load balancing.
-
Channel service. The Channel service provides core
functionality for Chat Rooms, except for file posting, which is
managed through the Web Service.
-
Web service. The Web service is used to post files to group
channels. Internet Information Services (IIS) version 6.0 hosts the
Web service.
-
Lookup service. The Lookup service provides the chat room
address, distributes sessions to Channel Servers, and in
multiple-server topologies manages load balancing.
- A computer hosting the Microsoft SQL Server database for
storing ongoing and archival chat data, as well as information
about categories and channels that are created, user provisioning
information from the Group Chat Administration Tool and initial
sign-in, and basic configuration information about the Group Chat
Servers.
- Group Chat client computers. These computers are not required
to be 64-bit.
If compliance is required, the single-server topology must also include the following:
-
Compliance service. If configured, the Group Chat compliance
feature archives a comprehensive record of both logged and unlogged
group chat activity. IM content is not archived unless archiving is
configured in Office Communications Server. In this case, IM
content is archived on the Archiving Server.
-
SQL Server Database. This database can be either the Group
Chat database or a separate database on the Compliance Server.
The following figure shows all of the components of a topology with a single Group Chat Server and optional Compliance Server with a separate compliance database.
The following figure shows a multiple-server Group Chat topology.
Administration of Group Chat from a separate computer (such as an administrative console) requires installation of the following on the computer:
-
Group Chat Administration Tool
All of these computers must be deployed:
- In an Active Directory domain, with at least one global catalog
server in the forest root.
- Outside the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 pool.