Lync Server 2013 and Skype for Business Server 2015 provides pool pairing option to configure disaster recovery. Pool pairing option can be configured between two different Lync/Skype4B sites. In paired pool configuration, you can have both sites active but make sure maximum number of users should be based on single pool so that at the time of site failure another site can accommodate all the user without any performance issue. There are few important considerations which you have to make sure before planning of your disaster recovery setup.

1. You can configure pool pairing either between two identical Standard Edition Server or between two Enterprise Edition Front End Server pools in different sites.
2. Both the sites should have either physical server deployment or virtual server deployment. Mixed configuration is not supported.
3. Pool pairing allows backup pool configuration only between two sites and vice versa. You can’t configure backup pool between three sites, it means Site1 and Site2 can be configured as backup pool for each other but you can’t associate backup pool for site1 with site2 and site2 with site3.
4. Paired pool must be running on the same operating system.

This blogpost illustrate step by step pool paring configuration for Standard Edition server. In my lab setup, I have two Skype for Business Server sites.

UC LAB and UC LAB DR

UC LAB has one standard edition pool “se01.uc.lab” and UC LAB DR has on standard edition pool “se02.uc.lab”.

To configure pool pairing, first make sure your standard edition servers are up and running in healthy state.

Go to the topology builder and “Download Topology from existing deployment”.

Expand “Skype for Business Server”

Go to the first site and select Standard Edition Server.

Go to the properties of first standard edition server.

Go to the Resiliency under properties.

Enable “Associate backup pool” and select second standard edition server. Enable “Automatic failover and failback for Voice”. 30 Sec is minimum time for both the options.

Verify the configuration.

Now, you can publish the topology.

Go to the secondary server and verify the configuration.

You can see, setup has configured the backup pool for both the sites.

To cross verify the configuration you can use Skype for Business management shell.

Once you have done with the topology configuration part, Open Skype for Business Deployment Wizard and run “Install or Update Skype for Business Server System”

Run step 2 “Setup or Remove Skype for Business Server Components”

Setup will install backup service

Once you are done with the installation start backup service.

Follow the same deployment wizard process for second server.

Disaster recovery site has been configured successfully for Standard Edition Server.