The very useful Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 has been released. This release not only has been updated for R2 but also has even more useful features.

As per the documentation:

What’s New in the Planning Tool for Office Communications Server 2007 R2?

· Now supported on Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)

· Exports the topology to the Microsoft Office Visio drawing and diagramming software

· Exports the hardware for all sites to Microsoft Office Excel

· Includes hardware requirements and port information on each server role as well as port information for your firewalls

· Includes Enterprise Voice

· Saves the topology to a location and file name of your choice so that you can reload it at your convenience

· Provides the ability to add, edit, and delete sites

· Provides the ability to print topologies, server information, and planning and deployment steps

· Allows customizing design of each site

· Allows to specify whether you have a perimeter network for a site

· Dynamically draws the topologies faster

· No longer need to run as administrator on Windows Vista

· Introduces new features and topology recommendations for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2

· Provides a way to bypass the interview questions if you already know what features you want

Planning Tool Features

· Creates topologies for each site in your organization

• Computes the number of pools for each site

· Computes the number and types of hardware needed for your entire organization (number of servers, load balancers, SQL databases, number of ports, and approximation of number of gateways and Mediation Servers for Enterprise Voice), as well as for each site

· Calculates hardware requirements and port requirements for the hardware

· Provides hyperlinks to other resources, such as documentation, blogs, forums, and the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 user model.

· Provides prescriptive hyperlinks to the TechNet library for planning steps according to your specific topology.

· Provides prescriptive hyperlinks to the TechNet library for deployment steps according to your specific topology.