Planning Server Roles and Requirements

Use

A particular server or workstation may have one or more roles. There can be a single server working in all roles, or there can be one or more dedicated servers for each of the roles. A single-server system is limited to demo units, or very small systems where up to 20 agents are working eight hours a day.

For systems with more than 20 agents, it is recommended to set up a redundant multi-server environment. The servers and other workstations can have the following roles in the system.

Application servers are used for running various applications like the CEM server, call dispatcher, SIP bridge and so on. These applications cause more strain on the CPU capacity than disk I/O or memory. For large systems, it is useful to dedicate an entire server to one or two applications, but the hardware and software requirements are similar in all application servers.
Web servers require Microsoft IIS software to be installed.
Database servers must have the Microsoft SQL Server software installed. These servers have larger RAM and disk i/o requirements than other servers. As the capacity required by the databases is very large and very hard to predict, the servers hosting databases should be dedicated only to this task. To ensure the working reliability the servers should be clustered.
To enable sending e-mails, a connection to a mail server is required. The connection uses IMAP protocol and by default the port 143.
If the Reporting application is used, we recommend that you reserve a separate server for it. Microsoft Reporting Services requires that Analysis Services and Reporting Services components of the SQL are installed on the server.
The system should have two administration workstations that can be used for running the Infrastructure Administrator (IA) software.
Additionally, a good quality network environment is required for signaling and RTP. Effects of network downtimes and other related issues are discussed in Operation Guide.