[cisco-voip] CallManager 4.2 upgrade to 8.x on UCS

[Rhodes, Geoff]

I agree with you, Jim.  We love our VMWare cluster.  I would have to say
VMWare has had the biggest impact on our IT demands, second only to our
NetApp SAN.  Two great changes to the way we used to have to run the
backend stuff.  

We actually did a comparable quote using MCS boxes instead of the UCS,
but it was actually MORE EXPENSIVE..  Go figure.

I think we will end up putting the CM Pub, Sub, Unity and Presence all
on UCS, and moving the VMs around as we need to.  If we run into
problems, we can easily VMotion VMs around so that we troubleshoot
issues while having CM on its own blade.

- geoff

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim McBurnett [mailto:jim at tgasolutions.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2010 4:10 PM
To: Rhodes, Geoff; Wes Sisk
Cc: cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
Subject: RE: [cisco-voip] CallManager 4.2 upgrade to 8.x on UCS

Geoff,
I think the biggest VMWARE part comes from the single driver situation..
VMWARE memory, Ethernet, and system drivers only.. No longer a need to
have drivers for every motherboard
VMWARE handles that for us...


Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net
[mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Rhodes, Geoff
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2010 2:58 PM
To: Wes Sisk
Cc: cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] CallManager 4.2 upgrade to 8.x on UCS

I understand, but in my opinion we could easily VMotion any other apps
from that blade and have just the CM app running by itself to
troubleshoot.  I just have a hard time believing that our small install
would need a blade by itself.  If Cisco is that worried about it being
on a blade by itself, why require VMWare ESXi running on the blade, why
not run the app on the blade by itself?

- geoff

-----Original Message-----
From: Wes Sisk [mailto:wsisk at cisco.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2010 1:40 PM
To: Rhodes, Geoff
Cc: cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] CallManager 4.2 upgrade to 8.x on UCS

"As long as performance doesn't suffer"

That's the gotcha.  We don't have a way inside the CM application or VOS

to reliably detect when "performance suffers". Example: your users can 
experience delayed dialtone up to 5 seconds without every triggering 
high IOWait or CodeYellow alarms.  You are left to depend on user 
reports.  As an administrator that leaves you in a completely reactive 
position. That is not acceptable especially where voice and calls are 
involved.

/Wes

On Thursday, August 05, 2010 11:47:50 AM, Rhodes, Geoff 
<GRhodes at rbh.com> wrote:
> We are about to upgrade our existing CallManager 4.2 system to 8.x,
probably on our new Cisco UCS platform.  We have been told by our
reseller that Cisco requires that the Publisher and Subscriber run on
separate blades, and that NO OTHER APPS are allowed to run on those
blades.  I am totally blown away by this.  Our phone system is
relatively small (~ 400 phones), and I just cringe when I think that I
will be using an entire blade to run a single server.  We were told they
have to be running under VSphere 4 (ESXi), which is what we are running
on all the other blades for our servers.  I mean these UCS blades are SO
beefy, we are easily running multiple Exchange and SQL servers on one
blade.
>
> I simply cannot understand why it's required to have its own blade,
especially when it running under VMWare.  As long as performance doesn't
suffer, why would it even care?  I was told that we could run Unity and
Presence servers on the same blade our Pub or Sub, but no other
"non-Cisco" apps are allowed.
>
> Grrrr.
>
> Has anyone run 8.x on UCS?
>
> Many thanks in advance for any help here...
>
>
> Geoff Rhodes
> Director of Information Technology
> ROBINSON, BRADSHAW & HINSON
> 101 North Tryon Street, Suite 1900
> Charlotte, NC 28246
> P: 704.377-8188
> F: 704-339-3488
> grhodes at rbh.com
> www.rbh.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
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>   


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