Definition of Lync Server Sites

In Microsoft Lync Server 2010, you define sites that contain Lync Server 2010 components. A site in Lync Server is a set of Lync Server computers that are well connected by a high-speed, low-latency network, such as a single local area network (LAN) or two LANs connected by a high-speed fiber optic network (typically sites are organized according to geography and network bandwidth) 

 

Note:

Although the use of sites in Lync Server and Active Directory Domain Services are similar, your Lync Server are different from your Active Directory Domain Services (and from Microsoft Exchange Server sites also). Lync Server sites are specific to Lync Server

 

You'll always have at least one site in your Lync Server deployment that can be either a central site or a branch site.

• A central site contains at least one Front End pool or one Standard Edition server.

• A branch site is associated with exactly one central site, and the users at the branch site get most of their Lync Server functionality from the servers at the associated central site. Each branch site contains at least :

  • a public switched telephone network (PSTN) connection and can also include an optional Mediation Server.

  • Alternatively, a branch site could run a Survivable Branch Appliance, that combines a PSTN gateway with a Lync Server Registrar and Mediation Server.

Branch sites with a Survivable Branch Appliance can retain Enterprise Voice communications if the WAN fails or the central site goes offline. For details about the Survivable Branch Appliance and branch site resiliency, see Planning for Enterprise Voice Resiliency in the Planning documentation. 

Sites play a key role in Lync Server management: most policies and settings can be configured at the site scope, making it easy to do such things as apply one set of dial plans to a site and a completely different set of dial plans to users in another site.

Configuring Sites in Lync

 

Launch the Lync Server Topology Builder application.

Create a New Topology or Download an existing one.

 

 

If you’re defining a new topology you’ll need to configure informations about the SIP domain.

Define the Name and Description of the first site. The site information will be used by many of the new resiliency features in Lync Server.

 

 

You’ll have to insert site details, provide City, State/Province, and Country/Region Code information specific to your site.

 

 

If you’re defining a central site you’ll have the following screen with the opportunity to launch the

 

 

“New Front End “ wizard.

 

 

If you’re defining a branch site you’ll have the opportunity to launch the

 

 

“New Survivable Branch Appliance” Wizard

 

 

 

How to get a list of Lync Server Sites

 

If you want information about all your sites all you need to do is run this command:

 

Get-CsSite

 

Or, to get back information for just one of your sites, use a command like this:

 

Get-CsSite –Identity "Redmond"

How to create a site policy

Depending on the type of policy you're working with, policies can be configured at the site scope, the service scope, or the per-user scope. (You can, and will, also have policies at the global scope, but those have been pre-created for you and you can’t create any new ones at that scope. However, you can modify these global policies any time you want.)

 

 

So how do you create a site policy vs. a service policy vs. a per-user policy? The difference between the policy types lies in the Identity you give that new policy. For example, to create a new per-user policy you basically just give the policy a name (it's not really a name, but you'll get the idea):

 

New-CsExternalAccessPolicy –Identity "RedmondExternalAccess"

 

To create a new policy at the service scope (something you'll rarely do, because most policies can't be created at the service scope) you need to use the service ID as the policy Identity:

 

New-CsClientVersionPolicy -Identity "Registrar:atl-cs-001.litwareinc.com"

 

Last, but certainly not least, you create a site policy by setting the Identity to the prefix site: followed by the name of the site:

 

New-CsVoicePolicy –Identity "site:Redmond"

References

 

To write down this article I used (also) images and informations from the following blogs / sites
  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398654.aspx

http://blog.schertz.name/2010/09/lync2010rc-Deployment-part1/ 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/csps/Archive/2011/03/21/lyncserversites.aspx

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