Is Skype for Business Server supported on Cloud IaaS, Azure, AWS, GCE?

This question comes up a lot. Customers want to move “to the cloud” but for whatever business/commercial/technical reason they don’t want to go Office 365 / Skype for Business Online / Teams or to a provider that will host Skype for Business Server for them.

They have a “cloud first” / IaaS strategy and want to put SfB Server in the cloud and manage it themselves, but is this supported?

What does “supported” mean?

Generally, customers mean, will Microsoft support us. So, if we have to raise a support ticket on Microsoft will they help us.

The question is not “will it work”? SfB Server will install and probably work on any platform that supports windows server. That’s not the question.

The question is not “does that IaaS provider support it”. Any provider can offer the option to run SfB Server on their platform, that doesn’t mean Microsoft support it.

The question is not “is this a good idea”. Odds are it’s probably not, it’s going to be expensive, you are dealing with real-time media.

The question is not “does Microsoft want you to do this” – the answer is no, they don’t.

What is “Microsoft supported”?

Microsoft will basically support any customer that deploys in line with their documented requirements/recommendations. For example, it doesn’t matter if you deploy on Dell, HP, or A Another brand servers, as long as you meet the requirements.

Microsoft actually now list hardware as recommendations and say “These aren’t requirements, but they reflect the requirements necessary for optimal performance.” source.

Hardware requirements are here so I won’t repost them, but if you meet the hardware and software requirements, you are “supported”.

It used to be publicly documented what was supported when it comes to virtualising Skype for Business Server. Curiously all this documentation seems to have been removed for Skype for Business Server 2015 (I’m not sure if it was posted for Skype for Business Server 2019). From what I remember certain versions of Hyper-V and Vmware were supported. It was never recommended to virtualise and there were very specific configurations to make it supported.

Update 5th April: At time of writing, SfB Server 2019 is not supported on virtual: https://tomtalks.blog/2019/04/skype-for-business-server-2019-is-not-supported-on-virtualisation/

So can an IaaS provider be supported?

Azure – No. Not a supported Hypervisor and no offer of bare metal servers to meet the requirements. Microsoft used to have an explicit document that said it wasn’t supported, but it’s gone/

GCE (Google Compute Engine) – No. Not a supported hypervisor and no offer of bare metal servers to meet the requirements.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) – This one is interesting. AWS offer dedicated VMware clusters and bare metal hardware. On paper, you could order the right hardware to meet Microsoft’s support requirements.

Any other IaaS provider – Same rules above would apply. If they can meet the requirements it would be supported.

Is this blog authoritative?

No! . I don’t work for or speak for Microsoft. My recommendation would be not to put SfB Server on any IaaS provider. It’s a complex workload to deploy and manage, you don’t need extra complexity and questionable support. Also, it’s likely more expensive than putting it on your own servers or going to a specialist hoster/partner. If you do want to do it, I suggest you talk to Microsoft about this support stance.