Lync Monitoring is not mandatory, but it is a vital part of any deployment, to analyze and troubleshoot errors and trends (this is especially true if we are going to deploy Enterprise Voice). Using the data available through monitoring, it is possible to take design decisions and fix errors in a deployment. Monitoring Reports include reports such as user activity, conference summary, IP phone inventory, and Call Admission Control (to name a few), but the biggest benefit for Lync administrators are the diagnostic reports used to detect errors in the various functionalities of Lync. In Lync Server 2013, the monitoring functionality has been modified from the configuration point of view if we compare it with Lync Server 2010.

Monitoring is now a service (not a server role) co-located on the Front End Server, and it is also possible to use the Lync Back End database to store the monitoring data (Components and topologies for monitoring in Lync Server 2013 at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg412952.aspx) with no dedicated SQL Server or instance required. The co-located database scenario is the easiest to implement, but it is not a recommended one for a number of reasons, including performance and reliability issues.