In the Office Communications Server Enterprise Edition expanded configuration, each server role runs on a dedicated computer.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 continues support for the expanded configuration. However, the consolidated configuration is now the recommended topology for most organizations. The primary advantage of the expanded configuration in Office Communications Server 2007 was its ability to scale in very large deployments. In Office Communications Server 2007 R2, the limitations for scaling have been removed from the consolidated configuration, making it the preferred solution both in terms of scaling and simplified administration.

Note:
Office Communications Server 2007 R2 supports deployment of the expanded configuration only from the command line. The Setup deployment wizards do not support expanded configuration deployment.

Because the expanded configuration is installed from the command line, Application Server and the unified communications applications must be installed independently on the computer where Front End Server is installed. If you plan to install any of the following unified communications applications, you must also install Application Server:

Note:
You can install all the applications, but activate only the ones you plan to use.

For details about the roles and components that are needed to provide various types of functionality, see Features and Componentsin the Planning and Architecture documentation.

In the expanded configuration of Office Communications Server Enterprise Edition, each pool can support up to 100,000 active, concurrent users.

In this configuration, the Front End Servers and the Web Components Servers (running IIS) are each connected to a hardware load balancer. A single load balancer can be used for both, or separate load balancers can be deployed for the Front End Servers and for the Web Components Servers.

See Also