install multiple Unity Servers into one Active Directory

[applegreen]

we need to install multiple Unity serves ( not Failover server, totally seperate Unity servers) into one active directory, I am not sure if there are specail requirment for the "service accounts", can those unity servers share the same Unity server account? for example, unityinstall acount is created during the first unity install, can the following ones still use that or need another one, since when we run the permission wizward , there are so mnay errors using the same accounts as the first ones, troubleshooting now, also glad if some one can help to clear this up, thanks

[Tommer Catlin]

If you created all the AD account before hand in the directory, documented the passwords correctly, you should be able to use those accounts on multiple Unity deployments. I have setup multiply Unity servers in the same domain, but across the WAN. So I use Sites and Services to create the links correctly and also Exchange Sites. You only need one "set" of Unity accounts for the AD domain. You can reuse these on all the Unity servers.

Accounts:

Administrator - (local) admin

SA - Unity System Admin

Unity AD Admin - template for Unity admin subscriber

Unity AD user - templete for Unity user subscriber

Unity Default Subscriber - TUI interface login

UnityAdmin - Unity Domain Admin

UnityDirSvc - Unity Directory Services

UnityInstall - Unity install access (domain)

UnityMsgStoreSvc - Unity messenging store access (granted through the wizards)

hope this helps

[Ginger Dillon]

Hi -

What does your AD forest tree look like? For example, we have an empty root abc.net, where schema updates are performed. All of our domains are children of this root, xxx.abc.net. We created a single set of accounts in abc.net (unityinstall, unitydirsvc, unitymsgstoresvc). However, in each domain xxx.abc.net where a Unity server resides, the administrator account also resides in that domain. One caveat we encountered in making this work, all domain controllers Unity will communicate with also need to be Global Catalog Servers. Otherwise, the permissions wizard cannot find the accounts in the root when running on the Unity server. Having one set of accounts is SO MUCH easier to manage. If you do want to make this change and you have existing accounts for Unity, you will need to rerun the Unity permissions wizard on each Unity server, followed by Service Accounts wizard and Message Store Configuration Wizard. Create your accounts in your highest level domain and allow replication to occur so that all domains see the new accounts before you change anything on Unity. We accomplished this on three Unity servers over a change window weekend. It's a bit of work initially to get set up, but you'll reap the reward each time to do an upgrade or install a new server.

Regards, Ginger