Connecting two standard editions of Skype fo Business 2015

Copper Contributor

Hello all,

 

I am currently working for company which has just opened up a new branch. During the deployment of the new branches domain it was decided to make it completely separate from our parent domain. Both domain's currently have a standard deployment of Skype for Business 2015. Users are able to communicate within their respective domains but I am trying to have them able to talk across domains. I currently do not know where to start.

 

From what I've seen it might need to deploy a new Edge server but I'm not exactly sure and am looking for some guidance. Any help would be appreciated.

6 Replies

Hi,

 

Since they are setup as two separate organizations you have to treat them like that and setup a edge server in each domain so that the communication between the two organisations goes thru edge servers. Make sure that servers can't reach each other on the internal network, all communication have to go via edge servers and Internet.

Hi moorec43,

if those domains are separate ad forests you have to use the edge server role to connect them. Pairing the standard editions is only possible if they share the same ad forest.
Supported AD topologies can be found here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SkypeForBusiness/plan-your-deployment/requirements-for-your-environ...
This edge server is sitting in the DMZ and allows connectivity for all SfB workloads between the two deployments.
You can have a look at the reference typologies to get idea how this looks:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/plan-your-deployment/topology-basics/reference-top...

Depending on the network environment this setup can be challenging. If you do not have a shared network infrastructure and have different DMZ it is good starting point.

A point to start planning for the edge deployment can be found here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SkypeForBusiness/plan-your-deployment/edge-server-deployments/edge-...

There are also a few blog posts out there how to deploy the edge role. This is an example from Jeff Schertz:
http://blog.schertz.name/2016/03/skype-for-business-2015-edge-server-deployment/

Paul

Paul,

 

Just to clarify you are saying I can deploy an edge server to each of my domains then just create a SIP federation between the two edge servers.  Even though I'm using standard edition on both sites I should  be good to just build an edger server and connect the two. 

 

My two sites are independent of each other and do no share an AD Forest.

Yes. But at Linus pointed out it is also important that the network of both domains are separated and there is no direct link between them.
The communication between the two clients would then be:
Client A -> Standard Edition A -> Edge Server A --Federation-> Edge Server B -> Standard Edition B -> Client B
Hello there, I have a question in this scenario, can we call /chat to a user who is in another forest or just inviting to our conference? in other words, I wanna search my user for instance: email address removed for privacy reasons which is in another forest.
Is it possible?
Hi moorec43,
Did you implement this scenario?