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Mastering the 70-664 Exam: Foundations of Unified Communications

The Microsoft 70-664 Exam, "TS: Microsoft Lync Server 2010, Configuring," was a pivotal certification for IT professionals specializing in the then-emerging field of Unified Communications (UC). This exam was designed to validate an administrator's technical skills in deploying and managing the Lync Server 2010 platform, a product that integrated instant messaging, presence, conferencing, and voice communications into a single, cohesive system. While Lync Server has since evolved into Skype for Business and now Microsoft Teams, the fundamental principles of real-time communication it championed are more relevant than ever. This series will explore these core concepts, using the structure of the 70-664 Exam as a guide to building a durable and valuable understanding of collaboration technologies.

In this introductory part, we will establish the essential context for your study of unified communications. We will begin by decoding the 70-664 Exam, clarifying its original purpose and the expertise it certified. We will then explore the dynamic role of a UC administrator, who manages the very pulse of modern business collaboration. We will break down the core pillars of UC, introduce the Lync Server 2010 architecture, and discuss the critical dependencies on Active Directory and DNS. Finally, we will argue for the lasting value of this knowledge in today's cloud-centric world and provide a high-level overview of the exam's objectives.

Decoding the 70-664 Exam

The Microsoft 70-664 Exam was developed to be the definitive test for administrators tasked with configuring a Microsoft Lync Server 2010 environment. Its primary objective was to certify that a candidate possessed the core skills necessary for the operational management of a Lync deployment. This included everything from the initial installation of server roles to the configuration of user policies, the enablement of external access for remote users, and the setup of conferencing and voice features. Passing this exam earned the candidate the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) credential, a well-respected validation of their technical proficiency.

This exam was aimed at IT professionals, often with a background in Windows Server or Exchange Server administration, who were responsible for their organization's real-time communication infrastructure. The content assumed a strong foundation in core infrastructure technologies, including Active Directory, DNS, and public key infrastructure (PKI) for certificates. The 70-664 Exam built upon this foundation to test specific knowledge of Lync's unique topology, its reliance on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) for signaling, and its integration with other business applications like Microsoft Office and Exchange Server.

A successful pass in the 70-664 Exam demonstrated a specific and highly sought-after skill set. It signified that you could correctly deploy the various Lync server roles according to a defined topology. It proved you could manage users and clients, controlling the features they were able to access through granular policies. Furthermore, it certified your ability to configure the Lync Edge Server to securely enable communication with users outside the corporate firewall, a critical requirement for any modern business. The certification was a clear indicator that an administrator was ready to manage this complex, real-time platform.

The exam itself consisted of a variety of question formats, including multiple-choice questions and complex case studies. The case studies were particularly challenging, as they would present a detailed scenario about a company's collaboration needs and require the candidate to make a series of configuration decisions to meet those needs. This format ensured that certified professionals had not just memorized settings, but could also apply their knowledge to solve practical, real-world business problems.

The Role of a Unified Communications Administrator

A Unified Communications (UC) administrator is responsible for managing the technologies that enable people to connect and collaborate in real time. This role is at the heart of modern business productivity, ensuring that employees can communicate seamlessly through instant messaging, see their colleagues' availability via presence, and join audio or video conferences from anywhere in the world. The skills tested in the 70-664 Exam are a classic representation of the core duties of a UC administrator in an on-premises environment.

The daily tasks of a UC administrator revolve around the health and performance of the communications platform. They are responsible for provisioning users, managing the policies that control user features, and ensuring the various server roles are functioning correctly. They monitor the quality of calls and conferences, troubleshoot issues reported by users, and work to optimize the network to support real-time media traffic, which is highly sensitive to latency and jitter.

A significant part of the role involves managing the gateways to other communication networks. This includes configuring and maintaining the Edge Servers that allow for secure communication with remote users and federated business partners. For organizations using the voice features, the UC administrator also manages the connection to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), enabling users to make and receive calls to traditional phone numbers directly from their Lync client.

Troubleshooting is a constant and critical function. When a user cannot sign in, a conference call has poor audio quality, or an important instant message is not delivered, the UC administrator must act as a skilled detective. This requires a deep understanding of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), network traffic analysis, and the ability to read and interpret the detailed logs generated by the various Lync Server components. The 70-664 Exam was designed to ensure that certified individuals possessed these essential problem-solving abilities.

Core Concepts of Unified Communications (UC)

To understand the material covered in the 70-664 Exam, one must first grasp the fundamental pillars of Unified Communications. UC is not a single product, but an integration of various real-time communication tools into a single, consistent user experience. The goal is to break down the silos between different communication methods and make it easier for people to connect.

The first and most basic pillar is Instant Messaging (IM). This allows for real-time, text-based conversations between two or more people. It is a fast and informal way to ask quick questions and get immediate responses, far more efficient than email for short, interactive discussions.

The second pillar is Presence. Presence is the information that tells you about a user's availability and willingness to communicate. You can see if a colleague is "Available," "Busy," "In a Meeting," or "Away." This simple piece of information is incredibly powerful, as it allows you to choose the most effective way to communicate with someone at any given moment. If they are available, you can send an IM; if they are busy, you might send an email instead.

The third pillar is Conferencing. This brings together groups of people to collaborate. Lync Server supported multiple conferencing modalities, including IM conferencing for group chats, web conferencing for sharing presentations and whiteboards, and audio/video conferencing for face-to-face meetings. The final, and most advanced, pillar is Enterprise Voice. This is the integration of the UC platform with the traditional telephone system, effectively allowing the platform to function as a complete, software-based phone system or IP PBX. The 70-664 Exam covered the configuration of all these core pillars.

Understanding the Lync Server 2010 Architecture

The Lync Server 2010 architecture, a core topic for the 70-664 Exam, was based on a set of specialized server roles that worked together to deliver the various UC services. Understanding the function of each of these roles is essential for planning a deployment and for troubleshooting.

The most important role was the Front End Server. The Front End Server was the heart of the Lync environment. It was responsible for user authentication, presence and instant messaging services, and for hosting the conferencing workloads. All internal clients would connect to a Front End Server to sign in and access Lync services. For scalability and high availability, you could deploy multiple Front End servers into a pool.

The Front End Server relied on a Back End Server, which was a dedicated instance of Microsoft SQL Server. The Back End Server stored all the critical user data and conferencing information for the Front End pool. This separation of the application logic (on the Front End) from the data storage (on the Back End) was a key architectural principle that improved performance and manageability.

For external communications, the key role was the Edge Server. The Edge Server was a specially hardened server that was placed in the network's perimeter (or DMZ). Its job was to securely relay all traffic between your internal Lync users and external parties, such as remote users, federated partners, or public IM networks. Finally, there was the optional Director role, which could be placed in front of the Front End pool to handle initial user authentication and redirection.

The Importance of Active Directory and DNS

Lync Server 2010 was not a standalone application; it was deeply integrated with and dependent upon the core Microsoft infrastructure services of Active Directory and DNS. A thorough understanding of these dependencies was a critical prerequisite for anyone taking the 70-664 Exam. A misconfiguration in either AD or DNS would cause the entire Lync environment to fail.

Active Directory served as the central directory and user database for Lync Server. All Lync users had to have a corresponding user account in Active Directory. When you "enabled" a user for Lync, the Lync administration tools would add a set of specific msRTCSIP-* attributes to that user's AD object. These attributes stored all of the user's Lync-specific configuration, such as their SIP address and the policies assigned to them. Lync Server constantly read from and wrote to AD.

DNS (Domain Name System) was equally critical, as it was the mechanism that Lync clients used to find the Lync servers. This process, known as service discovery, relied on a set of specific DNS records. When a Lync client started, it would perform a series of DNS lookups for special SRV (Service) records, such as _sipinternaltls._tcp.company.com. These records would point the client to the correct Front End Server or pool to connect to.

Without a correctly configured set of DNS records, clients would be unable to sign in, and servers would be unable to communicate with each other. The 70-664 Exam would have expected candidates to know the names and purposes of the key DNS records required for both internal and external client sign-in.

Why Study for the 70-664 Exam Today?

One might question the utility of studying for the 70-664 Exam, a certification for a product that is now several generations old. The value, however, lies in the foundational principles of Unified Communications that the exam curriculum covers. The technologies and protocols that powered Lync Server are the direct ancestors of the technologies that power Microsoft Teams today. Understanding the on-premises foundation provides invaluable insight into how the modern cloud-based solutions work.

The concepts of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for signaling, Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) for media, and the challenges of traversing firewalls and NATs for real-time communication are timeless. The Lync Edge Server's architecture for securely enabling external access is conceptually the same architecture used by Microsoft Teams to connect to the outside world. By learning how the Lync Edge Server worked, you gain a deep understanding of the fundamentals of real-time media proxying.

This knowledge is particularly crucial for organizations that are operating in a hybrid model. A very common scenario today is for a company to use Microsoft Teams for its primary collaboration but to connect it to the traditional phone system using a technology called Direct Routing. This involves using an on-premises Session Border Controller (SBC), which functions in a role very similar to the Lync Mediation Server and PSTN Gateway. An administrator who understands the principles of on-premises Enterprise Voice from the 70-664 Exam curriculum is perfectly equipped to design and manage these complex hybrid voice solutions.

Studying these topics is an investment in understanding the "first principles" of enterprise collaboration. It provides the context and the "why" behind the design of modern UC platforms. This deep, foundational knowledge is what separates a senior administrator or architect from someone who only knows how to click buttons in a cloud portal.

Lync Server Deployment and Core Configuration

After establishing the foundational concepts of Unified Communications and the high-level architecture of Lync Server 2010, we can now transition to the practical aspects of deploying and configuring the environment. The 70-664 Exam was heavily focused on the hands-on skills required to take a set of servers and transform them into a functioning Lync organization. This involves a methodical process of preparing the underlying infrastructure, defining the Lync topology, installing the server roles, and performing the initial configuration of users and clients. These are the essential first steps in building any collaboration platform.

In this second part of our series, we will follow the logical sequence of a real-world Lync deployment. We will begin by exploring the critical infrastructure prerequisites, with a special focus on preparing Active Directory and DNS. We will introduce the Topology Builder, the central tool for designing your Lync environment. We will then provide a conceptual overview of the installation process, the methods for provisioning users, the management of client policies, and the fundamentals of Lync's Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) security model, all of which are critical knowledge areas for the 70-664 Exam.

The 70-664 Exam Perspective on Deployment

The 70-664 Exam approached the topic of Lync Server deployment by emphasizing the importance of a structured and well-planned process. The exam questions were designed to validate that a candidate understood that a successful Lync deployment is not just about running a setup wizard, but about carefully preparing the environment and making key design decisions upfront. The exam would have tested your knowledge of the entire deployment lifecycle, from the initial Active Directory preparation to the final verification of a successful installation.

A significant focus of the exam's deployment section would have been on the correct use of the Lync Server-specific preparation tools. You would need to demonstrate your understanding of the commands required to extend the Active Directory schema, and to prepare the forest and the domain for Lync Server. These steps create the necessary AD objects and permissions that Lync relies upon, and performing them in the correct order and with the right permissions is critical.

The exam would have also required you to be proficient with the Lync Server Topology Builder. This graphical tool is where you define every aspect of your Lync deployment, from which servers will host which roles to the names that clients will use to connect to the services. The exam would have tested your ability to create a new topology, define sites and server pools, and correctly publish that topology. The published topology is the blueprint that the Lync installation process follows.

Finally, the exam's perspective on deployment included an understanding of the installation process on the individual servers themselves. This is a multi-step process that involves using the Lync Server Deployment Wizard. The wizard guides you through tasks like installing the local configuration store and then installing the actual software components for the specific role (e.g., Front End or Edge). The 70-664 Exam would expect you to know the sequence of these steps.

Preparing the Infrastructure for Lync Server

Before you can even begin to install Lync Server, you must prepare your core infrastructure. The 70-664 Exam would have stressed the importance of these prerequisite steps. The most critical dependency is Active Directory. Lync Server is deeply integrated with AD and uses it to store a vast amount of its configuration and user information. The first step is to prepare the AD schema. This involves running a command-line tool (SchemaPrep) that adds numerous Lync-specific classes and attributes to the AD schema. This is a one-time operation for the entire forest.

After the schema is extended, you must prepare the forest. This step (ForestPrep) creates the global settings and objects that will be used by all Lync servers in the forest. It also creates the universal security groups that are used for Lync administration. Finally, you must prepare each domain that will contain Lync users or servers. This step (DomainPrep) grants the necessary permissions to the global groups that were created during the forest preparation.

DNS is another critical prerequisite. You must create the necessary DNS records that clients will use to discover the Lync servers. For internal clients, this primarily involves creating DNS A records for your Front End pool and a set of SRV records that point to this pool. A common SRV record is _sipinternaltls._tcp, which is used by clients to find the server for SIP TLS traffic.

Finally, you must prepare the Windows Servers that will host the Lync roles. This involves installing a number of prerequisite roles and features, such as the Web Server (IIS) role and the Microsoft .NET Framework. The 70-664 Exam would have expected you to know these foundational infrastructure requirements.

Introduction to the Lync Server Topology Builder

The central tool for designing and documenting your Lync Server 2010 deployment is the Topology Builder. The 70-664 Exam would have required you to be proficient in using this tool, as it is the starting point for every Lync installation. The Topology Builder provides a graphical interface that allows you to define every server, every service, and every setting that constitutes your Lync environment. The output of the Topology Builder is an XML file that serves as the master blueprint for your deployment.

The first step in using the Topology Builder is to define your sites. A Lync site typically corresponds to a physical location or a datacenter with good network connectivity. Within each site, you then define the Lync servers that will be deployed there. The most common server to define is the Standard or Enterprise Edition Front End Server or Pool. A Standard Edition server is a single server that co-locates all the core services, while an Enterprise Edition pool consists of multiple Front End servers for scalability and high availability.

When you define a Front End pool, you must also specify its associated Back End SQL Server, as well as other roles that might be co-located or associated with it, such as the Archiving or Monitoring server. A critical part of the process is defining the "Simple URLs." These are user-friendly URLs that are easy to remember and type, such as meet.company.com for conferences and dialin.company.com for dial-in conferencing access.

Once you have defined your entire topology, including any Edge Servers or Mediation Servers, the final step in the Topology Builder is to "Publish" the topology. This action writes the configuration data from your XML file into the Central Management Store, which is a database hosted on your Back End Server. This published topology then becomes the authoritative configuration that all other Lync servers will use.

Installing Lync Server Roles

After the topology has been successfully published, you can begin the installation process on the individual servers. This process is guided by the Lync Server Deployment Wizard, and the 70-664 Exam would have expected you to know the sequence of steps involved. The wizard is a task-based interface that presents you with a checklist of the required actions.

The first step in the wizard on any new Lync server is to "Install or Update Lync Server System." The first sub-step here is to "Install Local Configuration Store." This step reads the master topology from the Central Management Store and creates a local, read-only copy of the relevant configuration on the server you are currently building. This ensures that the server can continue to function even if it temporarily loses connectivity to the Central Management Store.

The second sub-step is to "Setup or Remove Lync Server Components." This is the main installation phase. The wizard reads the local configuration store to determine which role this server is supposed to be (e.g., a Front End Server). It then installs all the necessary software binaries, services, and management tools for that specific role.

The third and fourth steps in the wizard are related to certificates. Step three, "Request, Install or Assign Certificates," is used to obtain and assign the SSL certificate that the server will use to secure its communications. Step four, "Start Services," is the final step where you actually start the Lync services for the first time. You must follow these steps in order for each server you deploy in your topology.

User Provisioning and Client Policies

Once the Lync Server infrastructure is up and running, the next critical task, and a major topic for the 70-664 Exam, is to enable users for the service. User provisioning is the process of taking an existing Active Directory user account and "Lync-enabling" it. This is done using either the graphical Lync Server Control Panel or the command-line Lync Server Management Shell.

When you enable a user, you must assign them to a specific Front End pool. This determines which server will handle their registration and SIP sessions. You also must configure their SIP address. A user's SIP address is their unique identity in the Lync world, and it is typically formatted to look like their email address (e.g., sip:john.doe@company.com). The administration tools can often generate this automatically based on the user's AD information.

A key aspect of user management is the application of policies. Lync Server uses a rich set of policies to control the features and capabilities that are available to users. For example, you can use a Conferencing Policy to control whether a user is allowed to share their desktop or record a meeting. You can use an External Access Policy to control whether a user is allowed to communicate with remote users or federated partners.

These policies can be created with different settings and then assigned to users on an individual or departmental basis. This allows for very granular control over the user experience. The 70-664 Exam would have required you to know the different types of policies that are available and how to create and assign them to users to meet specific business requirements.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

To manage a Lync Server environment securely, especially in larger organizations, it is important to be able to delegate administrative tasks without giving everyone full administrative rights. The 70-664 Exam would have tested your knowledge of Lync's security model for this, which is Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). Lync Server RBAC is based on the same model used by Exchange Server and Active Directory.

Lync Server comes with a set of predefined administrative roles. Each role is a collection of specific cmdlets and scripts that a member of that role is allowed to run. For example, the CsAdministrator role is the highest level of administrator and has full control over the Lync environment. The CsUserAdministrator role, on the other hand, can only manage users and assign policies; they cannot make changes to the server topology.

There are also specialized roles for specific functions. The CsVoiceAdministrator role can manage all the voice-related policies and settings, and the CsArchivingAdministrator can manage the archiving policies and view the archived data. By assigning users to these predefined roles, you can implement the principle of least privilege, giving administrators only the permissions they need to perform their specific job functions.

These roles are implemented as universal security groups in Active Directory. To delegate a specific administrative role to a user, you simply add their user account as a member of the corresponding AD group (e.g., the CS Voice Administrators group). The 70-664 Exam would have expected you to be familiar with the most common predefined roles and the administrative functions they are associated with.

Mastering Conferencing and External Access

With a functional Lync Server environment deployed and internal users enabled, the next logical step is to unlock the platform's core collaboration capabilities: conferencing and external access. The ability to bring groups of people together for real-time meetings and to securely connect with users outside the corporate firewall are essential business requirements. The 70-664 Exam placed a strong emphasis on an administrator's ability to configure and manage these critical, user-facing services. These features are what transform Lync from a simple instant messaging tool into a powerful collaboration hub.

In this third part of our series, we will conduct a deep dive into the world of Lync conferencing and secure external communication. We will explore the different conferencing modalities available in Lync and the policies used to control them. We will then shift our focus to the perimeter network, dissecting the architecture of the Lync Edge Server role and the crucial function of the Reverse Proxy. We will provide a conceptual walkthrough of enabling remote user access and federation, all of which are vital knowledge areas for the 70-664 Exam.

Conferencing Concepts for the 70-664 Exam

The 70-664 Exam approached the topic of conferencing by focusing on the administrator's role in enabling and controlling the various collaboration features. The exam questions would have been designed to validate that a candidate understood the different types of conferencing that Lync offered and knew how to use conferencing policies to tailor the experience to meet the organization's security and business needs. The focus was on the practical configuration of the service rather than the deep internals of the protocols.

A key concept tested would have been the different modalities of conferencing. You would need to be able to differentiate between an instant messaging conference (a group chat), a web conference (which includes data collaboration features like sharing PowerPoint presentations), and an audio/video (A/V) conference. The exam would expect you to know that these modalities can be used together in a single meeting and that the Front End Server is the central component responsible for hosting and managing these conferences.

Another major theme would have been the control of conferencing features through policies. The exam would have required you to be an expert in creating and assigning conferencing policies. These policies are the primary tool an administrator has to govern what users can and cannot do in a meeting. Questions would have been scenario-based, for example, "The legal department requires that their meetings can never be recorded. How would you accomplish this?" The answer would involve creating a specific conferencing policy that disables recording and assigning it to the users in the legal department.

Finally, the exam's perspective on conferencing included the integration with the traditional telephone world through dial-in conferencing. You would need a conceptual understanding of how Lync could be configured to allow users to join the audio portion of a meeting by dialing a phone number from any standard telephone. This demonstrated the platform's ability to bridge the gap between the worlds of data collaboration and traditional voice communication.

Understanding the Lync Conferencing Modalities

Lync Server 2010 offered a rich set of conferencing capabilities, and a core requirement for the 70-664 Exam was to understand these different modalities. The most basic form is instant messaging (IM) conferencing. This is essentially a persistent group chat where multiple users can exchange text messages in real time. This is useful for ad-hoc collaborative sessions or for running a text-based Q&A alongside a presentation.

Web conferencing added a layer of rich data collaboration to the meeting. This modality included the ability to share a PowerPoint presentation, where the presenter could navigate the slides for all attendees. It also included a virtual whiteboard, where participants could draw and annotate diagrams together. Another key feature was polling, which allowed the presenter to ask multiple-choice questions to the audience and see the results in real time. These features were all managed by the web conferencing service on the Front End Server.

The most bandwidth-intensive modality was audio/video (A/V) conferencing. This enabled multi-party video calls, allowing for face-to-face meetings with participants from around the globe. The A/V conferencing service on the Front End Server was responsible for mixing the audio and video streams from all the participants and distributing them to the other attendees. The quality of the A/V experience was highly dependent on the performance of the network.

A single Lync meeting could seamlessly combine all these modalities. You could start with a group IM, then escalate to sharing a presentation, and finally turn on video for a full collaborative experience. The 70-664 Exam would have expected you to be familiar with the purpose and features of each of these conferencing types.

Configuring Conferencing Policies

While Lync Server provided a powerful suite of conferencing tools, not every organization wanted to make every feature available to every user. The 70-664 Exam required administrators to know how to use conferencing policies to exert granular control over the meeting experience. A conferencing policy is a named collection of settings that can be assigned to users or sites, dictating what they are allowed to do in a conference.

Conferencing policies allowed an administrator to enable or disable specific features. For example, you could create a policy that completely disables the ability for users to share their entire desktop or a specific application. This might be done for security reasons to prevent the accidental disclosure of sensitive information. You could also control whether users are allowed to use peer-to-peer file transfer during a meeting.

The policies also controlled the data collaboration features. You could create a policy that allowed PowerPoint sharing but disabled the whiteboard and polling features. You could also control who is allowed to record a meeting. For compliance or privacy reasons, many organizations choose to disable the recording feature for most of their users, only enabling it for specific training or marketing groups.

These policies are created and managed using the Lync Server Control Panel or the Lync Server Management Shell (using cmdlets like New-CsConferencingPolicy). You can create multiple policies with different settings. For example, you could have a very restrictive default policy that applies to all users, and then a more permissive policy that you assign only to a specific group of advanced users. The 70-664 Exam would have tested your ability to design and apply these policies.

The Lync Server Edge Role

For any of the collaboration features of Lync to be useful for users outside the corporate network, you must deploy the Lync Server Edge role. The Edge Server is a critical component for enabling all external communication, and its architecture and configuration were a major topic on the 70-664 Exam. The Edge Server is a specially hardened server that is designed to be placed in the network's perimeter, or DMZ. It acts as a secure proxy and relay for all Lync traffic that needs to cross the firewall.

The Edge Server runs three distinct services, each with a specific purpose. The first is the Access Edge service. This service handles all the SIP signaling traffic for external users. When a remote user (e.g., someone working from home) signs in to Lync, their client connects to the Access Edge service. The Access Edge authenticates the user and then relays their SIP traffic, such as presence updates and instant messages, to the internal Front End Server.

The second service is the Web Conferencing Edge service. This service is responsible for relaying the data collaboration traffic for external users. When a remote user joins a conference and needs to view a shared PowerPoint presentation or use the whiteboard, their client connects to the Web Conferencing Edge, which then relays that traffic to the Front End Server where the conference is being hosted.

The third, and most complex, service is the Audio/Video (A/V) Edge service. This service is responsible for securely relaying the real-time media traffic (RTP) for audio and video sessions that involve external users. The A/V Edge is critical for enabling remote users to participate in conference calls and peer-to-peer video calls. It handles the complex tasks of traversing NATs and firewalls, which are often problematic for real-time media streams.

Enabling External User Access

Once the Edge Server is deployed, the administrator must configure it to allow different types of external access. The 70-664 Exam would have tested your knowledge of these configuration options. The most basic type of external access is for remote users. This allows your own company's employees to use the full Lync client from outside the office, for example, from their home internet connection or a hotel Wi-Fi network. Enabling this is a simple policy setting in the Lync Server Control Panel.

The next level of external access is federation. Federation allows your Lync users to communicate with the Lync users of another, trusted organization, such as a business partner or a major customer. When you establish a federation relationship, the Edge Servers of the two companies communicate with each other directly. This allows users to add federated contacts to their Lync client, see their presence, and communicate with them via IM, audio, and video, as if they were in the same company.

Lync Server also supported Public IM Connectivity (PIC). This was a specific type of federation that allowed your Lync users to communicate with users on public instant messaging networks, such as Windows Live Messenger.

The control over these external access methods is managed through a set of specific policies. The External Access Policy is used to control, on a per-user basis, whether a user is allowed to communicate with remote users, federated users, or public IM contacts. The 70-664 Exam would have required you to know how to configure these policies to meet different business requirements for external collaboration.

Reverse Proxy Configuration

While the Lync Edge Server handles the real-time SIP and media traffic, there is another critical component required for a complete external access solution: a reverse proxy. The 70-664 Exam would have expected you to understand the purpose of the reverse proxy and the services that it is responsible for publishing. A reverse proxy is a device that sits in the DMZ and securely publishes internal web services to the internet.

Several key Lync features rely on web-based communication using standard HTTP and HTTPS. These services are hosted on the internal Front End Server. The reverse proxy's job is to accept the inbound HTTPS requests for these services from the internet and securely forward them to the correct internal server.

The services that are published via the reverse proxy include the Lync Web Services, which are needed for features like downloading the address book, viewing distribution group memberships, and for the data collaboration portion of conferences (PowerPoint sharing). The reverse proxy also publishes the Autodiscover service, which is what external Lync clients use to locate the Lync servers.

Without a correctly configured reverse proxy, external users would be able to sign in and send instant messages (via the Edge Server), but many other features, especially conferencing, would not work correctly. The 70-664 Exam would have tested your knowledge of which Lync services require a reverse proxy and the role it plays in the overall external access architecture.

Implementing Enterprise Voice

Having mastered the core collaboration features of Lync Server, including conferencing and external access, we now arrive at the most advanced and complex pillar of Unified Communications: Enterprise Voice. This is the set of features that allows Lync Server to function as a complete, software-based IP PBX (Private Branch Exchange), effectively replacing an organization's traditional telephone system. The 70-664 Exam dedicated a significant portion of its content to this topic, as it required a deep understanding of both the Lync architecture and the principles of traditional telephony.

In this fourth part of our series, we will delve into the world of Lync Enterprise Voice. We will start by defining what Enterprise Voice is and exploring its core architectural components, including the Mediation Server and PSTN Gateways. We will then break down the intricate logic of call routing, the critical role of dial plans and normalization, and advanced features like Call Admission Control and Response Groups. Finally, we will touch upon the vital integration with Exchange Unified Messaging for voicemail services, all of which are essential knowledge areas for the 70-664 Exam.

Enterprise Voice Topics in the 70-664 Exam

The Enterprise Voice section of the 70-664 Exam was designed to test an administrator's ability to configure Lync Server to handle real-time voice traffic and to integrate it with the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The questions in this domain would have moved beyond the world of data networking and into the specialized realm of telecommunications. A successful candidate had to demonstrate proficiency in the concepts and terminology of both worlds.

A central theme of the exam's voice section was call routing. You would be expected to be an expert in the entire call routing process, from the moment a user dials a number to the point where the call is connected. This involved a deep understanding of the various voice policies, routes, and dial plans that work together to make routing decisions. The exam would have presented complex routing scenarios and required you to configure the correct set of policies to achieve a specific outcome.

Another major focus was on the components that bridge the gap between the IP-based Lync world and the circuit-switched PSTN world. This meant understanding the role of the Mediation Server for protocol translation and the function of a PSTN Gateway or a SIP Trunk for the physical or logical connection to the telephone company. The exam would have tested your knowledge of how to configure these components to enable inbound and outbound calling.

Finally, the exam's perspective on voice included the user-facing features that are common to any phone system. This included topics like creating normalization rules to handle different dialing habits, implementing Call Admission Control to protect network bandwidth, and configuring PBX-like features such as call forwarding, simultaneous ring, and Response Groups. The 70-664 Exam aimed to validate that an administrator could configure Lync to be a fully-featured replacement for a traditional phone system.

Introduction to Enterprise Voice

Enterprise Voice is the feature set in Lync Server that delivers a complete voice over IP (VoIP) solution for an organization. When a user is enabled for Enterprise Voice, their Lync client becomes their primary telephone. They get a unique phone number (a DID, or Direct Inward Dial number), and they can use the Lync client to make and receive calls to and from any other phone in the world, whether it is another Lync user, a colleague on a traditional desk phone, or a customer on their mobile phone.

The Lync client provides all the standard telephony features that users are accustomed to, such as call hold, call transfer, call forwarding, and caller ID. It also adds a layer of rich, software-based features, such as the ability to click-to-call a contact from their contact list or to easily escalate a simple phone call into a multi-party conference call by adding more participants.

The core of Enterprise Voice is the ability to connect to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). This is what allows Lync users to communicate with the billions of traditional telephones that exist outside of the Lync environment. This connection is the key to replacing a legacy PBX.

For the administrator, implementing Enterprise Voice involves a significant amount of configuration. You must create and assign voice policies to users, configure the dial plans that control how numbers are translated, and build the routes that tell Lync how to send calls out to the PSTN. The 70-664 Exam would have required a solid understanding of all these configuration elements.

Lync Voice Architecture Components

To enable Enterprise Voice, several key architectural components must be deployed and configured. The 70-664 Exam required a clear understanding of the role of each of these components. The primary call control logic for an Enterprise Voice user resides on the Front End Server or Pool where the user is homed. The Front End Server handles the call routing decisions and enforces the user's assigned voice policies.

To connect to the PSTN, Lync uses a specialized server role called the Mediation Server. The Mediation Server's primary job is to act as a translator. It translates the signaling protocol used by Lync (SIP over TCP or TLS) into the standard SIP over UDP that is used by most PSTN gateways and SIP trunk providers. It also translates the media streams (RTP) between the Lync clients and the gateway. The Mediation Server role can be co-located on the Front End Server or deployed as a standalone server.

The final piece of the puzzle is the connection to the PSTN itself. This is typically done in one of two ways. The first is by using a physical PSTN Gateway. A PSTN Gateway is a hardware device that has traditional telephone connections (like a PRI or analog lines) on one side and an Ethernet connection on the other. The Mediation Server talks to the gateway using SIP over the IP network, and the gateway then translates that into the appropriate signaling for the phone company's lines.

The second, and more modern, approach is to use a SIP Trunk. A SIP Trunk is a logical connection to an Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) that is delivered entirely over an IP network, eliminating the need for a physical gateway and traditional phone lines. The 70-664 Exam would have expected you to know the roles of these three key components: Front End, Mediation, and Gateway/Trunk.

Voice Routing and Call Management

The logic that Lync Server uses to route an outbound call to the PSTN is sophisticated and highly configurable. The 70-664 Exam would have required you to be an expert in this process. The routing decision is based on a series of linked configuration objects: Voice Policies, PSTN Usages, and Voice Routes.

The process begins with the user's Voice Policy. A Voice Policy is assigned to a user and it contains an ordered list of PSTN Usages. A PSTN Usage is simply a descriptive label that represents a class of call, for example, "Local," "Long Distance," or "International." The voice policy effectively defines what types of calls a user is allowed to make. A user in a call center might have a voice policy that only allows them to make local calls.

When a user makes a call, Lync looks at their assigned voice policy and the associated PSTN usages. It then looks for a Voice Route that is associated with one of those usages. A Voice Route is the object that defines the actual path for the call. It contains a number pattern (e.g., a pattern to match all long-distance numbers) and it specifies which PSTN Gateway or SIP Trunk the call should be sent to.

Lync will find all the routes that match the dialed number and are associated with a PSTN usage that the user is allowed to use. It will then pick the most specific matching route to send the call out. This flexible, policy-based routing is extremely powerful and is a central concept for the Enterprise Voice section of the 70-664 Exam.

Final Tips and Pre-Exam Checklist

You have invested a significant amount of time and effort to learn the complex and rewarding field of Unified Communications through the lens of the 70-664 Exam. The final step is to prepare for the logistics and mental state of the exam day itself. The day before the exam, your focus should be on light review and relaxation, not on cramming new information. A rested mind is a high-performing mind.

On the day of the exam, arrive at the testing center early and with all the required forms of identification. This will help you avoid any last-minute stress. Before you begin the test, take a few deep breaths. Trust in your preparation. You have studied the material, and you have the knowledge to succeed.

Here is your final pre-exam checklist:

1. Have you reviewed the official 70-664 Exam objectives and feel confident in each major domain?

2. Are you comfortable with the key cmdlets in the Lync Server Management Shell for users, policies, and voice?

3. Can you draw the Lync architecture, including the Edge Server and Reverse Proxy, for external access?

4. Can you explain the call routing process in Enterprise Voice, from Voice Policy to Voice Route?

5. Do you understand the different conferencing modalities and the policies that control them?

6. Have you confirmed your exam appointment details and prepared your identification?

7. Are you well-rested and ready to apply your knowledge to the challenging scenario questions?

If you can confidently answer yes to these questions, you are ready. Approach the exam with a calm and logical mindset, read each question with care, and demonstrate the valuable Unified Communications skills you have built. Good luck on your 70-664 Exam!

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