AWS Quick Starts

Lync Server on AWS

Communications platform with IM, conferencing, and telephony in the AWS Cloud

Deploy on AWS into a new VPC

(or deploy into an existing VPC)

View guide  — HTML | PDF

Quick Start architecture for Lync Server on the AWS Cloud

To deploy Lync Server on AWS, view the Quick Start deployment guide. To install Lync Server with other Windows servers on AWS in a single deployment, see the Quick Start for Microsoft servers, or view our complete Quick Start catalog.

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This Quick Start helps you build a Microsoft Lync Server 2013 environment in the AWS Cloud in a fault-tolerant and affordable way. Lync Server is a communications software platform that offers instant messaging (IM), conferencing, and telephony solutions for businesses of all sizes.

The automated AWS CloudFormation templates implement a small or medium-sized Lync Server environment with Active Directory. They deploy paired Lync Server 2013 Standard Edition pools across two Availability Zones to provide high availability and disaster recovery. The Quick Start deployment guide also provides sizing guidance and considerations for larger deployments with Lync Server Enterprise Edition.

  • What you'll build

    • A virtual private cloud (VPC) configured with public and private subnets across two Availability Zones. This provides the network infrastructure for your Lync Server deployment.*
    • An Internet gateway to provide access to the Internet.*
    • Public subnets in each Availability Zone that provide access to and from the Internet. The public subnets include network address translation (NAT) gateways or instances for outbound Internet access, and Remote Desktop Gateway (RD Gateway) instances for inbound remote administrative access.
    • Elastic IP addresses associated with the NAT and RDGW instances.*
    • (Optional) Lync Edge Servers in public subnets for external Lync users.
    • In the private subnets, Active Directory domain controllers. These domain controllers act as enterprise certificate authorities (CAs) that issue the required SSL certificates to the Lync Server infrastructure.*
    • Paired Lync Server 2013 Standard Edition pools, which are deployed in each Availability Zone to support disaster recovery and pool failover.
    • Your choice to create a new VPC or deploy into your existing VPC and AD DS environment on AWS. The template that deploys the Quick Start into an existing VPC skips the components marked by asterisks above.


    For details, see the Quick Start deployment guide.

  • Deployment details

    Before you deploy the Quick Start, review the design considerations for Lync Server on AWS. Build your highly available Lync Server environment in a few simple steps:

    1. Prepare your AWS account.
    2. Launch the Quick Start into a new VPC, if you want to build a new AWS infrastructure. (View template)
      -or-
      Launch the Quick Start into an existing VPC that has AD DS and RD Gateway installed, if you've already set up this environment. (View template)
      The deployment takes approximately 2 hours.
    3. Test the deployment. This step involves connecting to the Lync servers, creating and enabling test users, installing a Lync client, and testing pool failover for disaster recovery.


    To customize your deployment, you can choose different instance types for your resources, configure CIDR blocks and IP addresses, and optionally include Lync Edge servers in your AWS environment. 

    For detailed deployment and configuration instructions, see the Quick Start deployment guide.

  • Cost and licenses

    You are responsible for the cost of the AWS services used while running this Quick Start reference deployment. There is no additional cost for using the Quick Start.

    The AWS CloudFormation template for this Quick Start includes configuration parameters that you can customize. Some of these settings, such as instance type, will affect the cost of deployment. See the pricing pages for each AWS service you will be using or the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator for cost estimates.

    Lync Server 2013 can be deployed and licensed through the Microsoft License Mobility through Software Assurance program. For development and test environments, you can leverage your existing MSDN licenses for Lync Server 2013 using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Dedicated Instances. For details, see the MSDN on AWS webpage.

    This deployment uses an evaluation copy of Lync Server 2013 Standard Edition. To upgrade your version, consult Microsoft's documentation to determine any required steps based on the license type that you own.

    This Quick Start launches the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for Windows Server 2012 R2 and includes the license for the Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. The AMI is updated on a regular basis with the latest service pack for the operating system, so you don’t have to install any updates.