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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

MS Ignite BRK4129 - Hybrid Configuration Deep-Dive of Skype for Business

As promised in my Microsoft Ignite 2015 - Sessions, Venue, Expo post, here comes another summary / review of one of the Ignite Skype for business sessions.

Presented by Cezar Ungureanasu, Ramesh Narayanan and Vivek Bhatnagar.

A session to understand Skype for Business Hybrid scenarios & features and how Skype for Business On-Prem interacts with Skype for Business Online.

Hybrid = a combination of components on premises and online.

Development in cloud is iterating faser than the on premises versions (and Skype for business have already evolved since this presentation were held. Maybe most notably by the addition of the Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition.This presentaiton ended with som early thinking aronud this new feature and some questions around it.)

Requirements to start up a hybrid
  • Skype for business on premises with Edge and federation with Office 365
  • Office 365 tenant (Skype for business online licenses) with
    federation and shared SIP address space configured
  • Directory Synchronization
  • User authentication (ADFS, AD Sync)

Even Lync 2010 and Lync 2013 would work, in Skype for business some administrative GUIs for configuring and moving users have been added.

Also the Allowed /  Blocked domains list in the on-premises deployment must exactly match the Allowed domains list for your online tenant.

The "Hosting Provider" is an important active directory attribute, it tells the system where the user is homed.

For an On-premises user
RegistrarPool : pool01.kressmark.com
HostingProvider : SRV:

SRV: means - use DNS to find this users pool.

For an Online user
RegistrarPool : <empty> (but in the "Office 365 version / side" of the AD, this attribute will hold the name of the online "pool".)
HostingProvider : sipfed.online.lync.com

The "Hosting Provider" attribute will also be used when routing incoming Instant Messages and / or presence.

The presentation also included a demo of a user being moved, and the meeting invite link in his Outlook calender were uppdated.


For more info on Hybrid scenarios:

5 comments:

  1. Just a quick one: why are you posting now (2016 April) about a session in an event that happened 11 months ago (Ignite 2015 May). Any reason why it has become actual today?

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  2. Hello, no other reason than the fact I did not get to it earlier and it is still a good session. I had to watch it as we had some tricky issues with a Skype for business hybrid we installed recently.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the reply, makes sense then!

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  3. Is this dependent on the Mail component? We have not migrated any mailboxes yet. Will Skype for business hybrid work without the mail being setup?

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  4. Hello Ray, it is somewhat depending on your email server (being exchnage) for calendar status and missed conversations on so-forth. But the main functionality of Skype for business will Work just fine. Refer to this article for more info:

    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj945633.aspx

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