A few days ago Microsoft released the Skype for Business 2015 Planning Tool, it provides prescriptive guidance to get you started with planning your topology, for implementations of Skype for Business Server, use this tool together with the documentation on TechNet.
The Skype for Business 2015 Planning Tool will ask you a series of questions about your organization and the features that you are interested in. The planning tool will then use your answers to recommend a topology based on the tested Skype for Business 2015 user model.
What’s in the Planning Tool for Skype for Business 2015:
- The Planning Tool now allow user to have up to 10 sites, including central site and disaster recovery site
- The Planning Tool offers capacity guidance for Skype for Business Server 2015 new and updated features listed below.
- You can answer the questions about these features in the Planning Tool, and then the suggested topology will contain information for those features, e.g hardware, network, DNS, certificate, IP, etc, according to the Skype for Business 2015 user model.
- Persistent Chat
- Archiving with Exchange integration
- Mobility
- Multi-view Video
- SQL AlwaysOn
- High Availability and Disaster Recovery
- Office Web Apps
- Exchange Mailbox
- Skype for Business Server Planning Tool 2015 allows you to specify IPv6 IP addresses
- Planning Tool identifies the IP conflicts across sites in the suggest topology. You can then choose to show or hide IP conflict in the topology
- Planning Tool offers more user-friendly FQDN/IP/Port editing dialog
- Planning Tool updates the suggested hardware requirements, DNS, and certificates with Skype for Business Server 2015 changes
- Planning Tool updates the planning steps and deployment steps with Skype for Business Server 2015 changes
- Planning Tool offers better support for accessibility requirements
- Skype for Business Server Planning Tool 2015 offers improved export of Visio and Excel files. An exported Visio file matches the suggested topology diagram in the Planning Tool as well
- Planning Tool no longer supports the following features:
- Virtualized server design
- Export the Planning Tool file to Topology Builder
Direct download link: Skype for Business 2015 Planning Tool