[cisco-voip] Vmware Supported by Cisco...Thoughts??

[Ted Nugent]

My lab is and has been running on VMWare for almost 2
years now. I have most versions of CM/IPCC and Unity
setup as VM in my environment which makes customer
recreates a breeze! If I need a particular version to
recreate a scenario I simply spark up that VM, if I
need to test a patch or upgrade scenario I roll it out
on VMs before going to the customer site and if it
bombs I roll back the changes and start all over. Also
most of my VM are stored on an external USB HD so
they're completely portable and I can move them from
my home lab into the office lab without a hitch.
It works flawlessly in the lab providing you have
enough RAM and does in a production environment as
well (I know of at least 2 customers running it now in
a small environment under 500 phones), however we do
not support them nor would Cisco if they knew... TAC
has a hard time keeping up with all they have on their
plates now and support another 3rd party app like
VMWare would be a nightmare, it's not for your average
CM customer. Furthermore, according to some
conversations that I've had with DE's in the BU they
have no intentions of ever supporting Cisco IPT on
VMWare so you’re on your own. 
I do however see an opportunity for CM5.x to be
supported on VMWare since it will be appliance based
meaning you’re locked out of the Linux OS and this
would significantly reduce an sort of VM support
issues that might arise like drivers and disk space
issue but course you still have the fault tolerance
and other design consideration to deal with. I
planning on bringing CM5 into my VMWare lab the minute
I get my hands on a copy. It obviously needs to be
initially installed on an MCS server since, as I
understand it, it’s a single DVD that loads the OS and
CM at the sametime and does a hardware check during
install, however once it’s loaded I can just ghost off
a copy and use P2V to pull it into VM. The hurdle will
be the licensing since it’s tied to a MAC address and
I’m familiar with the CM5 eval licensing yet and what
it allows.


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