In a previous post my colleague Matt Sims went over the PowerShell commands used to install the prerequisite features and roles needed for the Lync Server 2013 Front End role (http://www.concurrency.com/blog/install-lyncserver2013frontendprerequisites/). This command is designed for Windows Server 2008 R2, and assumes you have .NET Framework 4.5 installed.
I recently began Concurrency’s internal deployment of Lync Server 2013 Preview on Windows Server 2012. Server 2012 is a supported option for Lync Server 2013 Preview, but evidently there are a few differences from Server 2008 R2 that need to be accounted for. After successfully getting Lync Server 2013 Preview up and running in a coexistence scenario with our old Lync Server 2010 Front End pool, Edge pool, and Forefront TMG reverse proxy I noticed that there were a number of confusing issues with our deployment. Normal PSTN, conferencing, IM, and presence functionality behaved as they should, but these issues persisted:
- The Lync Mobile Client reported that it could not connect to the server
- The chat room configuration webpages reported a server error
- The dialin configuration webpage did not work for users homed on the Lync Server 2013 Preview pool
- Distribution Group expansion did not work in the Lync desktop client
It turns out that the fix is a simple one. If you install Lync Server 2013 Preview on Windows Server 2012 be sure that you install the .NET Framework 4.5 HTTP Activation feature through Server Manager or PowerShell. After installing this and restarting the Front End servers these issues were resolved.
