[cisco-voip] Cisco MCS vs UCS Servers

Mon Sep 27 09:59:45 EDT 2010

From what I can tell the error you got is thrown when the hardware detection fails for whatever reason and can be simply cosmetic.  I would not put that as the cause of your upgrade failure.

-Ryan

On Sep 25, 2010, at 11:19 PM, Nick Matthews wrote:

You can throw this at the TAC engineer if needed:

"You can also run a mix of virtual and nonvirtual machines, including the servers in a backup or failover pair. Also note that to virtualize Cisco Unified Communications applications, there is an additional support burden. Customers provide the hardware, VMware ESXi software, and are responsible for coordinating support for these components, including provisioning and performance troubleshooting. Customers who are unwilling to take on such support may be better candidates for deploying Cisco Unified Communication applications on physical servers. "

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Computing_System_Hardware

I know the PM for this has specifically stated this multiple times.  If your publisher in the lab was not on UCS then the engineer was correct that it's not supported.

-nick

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 9:13 PM, Charles Goldsmith <wokka at justfamily.org> wrote:
This is the log from my TAC case, when trying to upgrade the Subscriber (hardware) to match the version on the Publisher (VM), I had the following error:

---
21 July 2010 23:39:03: PHONE LOG
I did a utils system upgrade status and found this:

DEBUG: Mismatch Manufacturer: expected VMware found IBM

Customer is running the Publisher in VMWare and the Subscriber in a 7835-I3.

According to previous cases this cannot be done and customer has to install all servers in VMWare or all in MCS servers.
---

Now, this TAC engineer might have been wrong, but he clearly states that these cannot be mismatched.  I wasn't necesarily looking for a supported setup, I was merely trying to test hardware in a lab before deploying out to a remote site, and do a bit of lab work prior.  I ran across an error during the upgrade and the resultant debug turned up the above mentioned message.

I didn't do an exhaustive search, but I don't see anywhere in the docs where you can mix and match between VM (on UCS) and hardware, nor did I find anything mentioning that you can't.

FWIW, I hope it works out for the people trying it..
Charles

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Nick Matthews <matthnick at gmail.com> wrote:
If your VMware publisher wasn't on a UCS server, then it isn't supported.  3rd party hardware isn't supported yet, except for Unity.

-nick

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 2:10 AM, Charles Goldsmith <wokka at justfamily.org> wrote:
Interesting, I was told by TAC that it was not supported.  To burn in hardware and to do some lab work before I put a subscriber into production, I paired it with a virtual publisher, upgrade on them failed miserably (they would run at the default version off the DVD), but I couldn't upgrade from whatever 8.x I had on DVD to current.  

If anyone wants details on this, I can dig it up, I had posted on here with the upgrade errors, when no response was had, opened a case on it and was told no.

BTW, my subscriber was an IBM server, 7835 series.

YMMV
Charles

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Nick Matthews <matthnick at gmail.com> wrote:
Yes.  Some of the limitations of the hardware are things like MoH live feeds, your console dumps now go somewhere else, RTMT hardware stats are replaced with some VMware/UCS equivalents, etc.  But from an application layer it's the same.  It does however know how much CPU/disk/memory you've given it and shows on the about screen.

-nick

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 8:19 PM, STEVEN CASPER <SCASPER at mtb.com> wrote:
Interesting.... For me to upgrade to 8.x I need to replace 4 of my subscribers and my publisher next year however I just purchased some HP G6 servers to replace my 7835 servers. Can you mix virtual subscribers and a publisher with MCS type subscriber and TFTP servers?

Steve

>>> Ahmed Elnagar <ahmed_elnagar at rayacorp.com> 9/23/2010 7:01 PM >>>
Cisco SEs is pushing on the virtualization for new customers and customers considering upgrading to version 8.x…be aware that all H series is already EOS due to the bad relationship between Cisco and HP “obviuolsy the UCS was part of the fight” IBM servers has a lot of problems “this is from my own personal point of view”.

UCS is great C series configuration is to support 4 X 7945 server and the cost is significantly less than hardware server…plus the added benefits like hardware efficiency and DC sizing for large customers…etc.

The drawbacks would be that you will need experience not only in UC part but add to it the VMware and UCS itself…if you are going to B series it is more complicated than the C series.

A great advantage for UCS is that you are able to have a sort of a “redundant Publisher server” as the database is stored in SAN and if the engineer fails it switches over to another own automatically so as if you have a redundant server “but I think this is supported with the B series” I am not very aware of deep technical info in this part.

If I were you I would go with UCS C series “for easier management”

And remember; all the world is going virtual J

 Best Regards;

  Ahmed Elnagar

  Senior Network PS Engineer

  Mob: +2019-0016211

  CCIE#24697 (Voice)

From: cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of george.hendrix at l-3com.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 4:41 PM
To: cisco-voip at puck.nether.net
Subject: [cisco-voip] Cisco MCS vs UCS Servers

Hi everyone,

  I noticed Cisco has the new UCS C and B series servers.  Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether these are the way to go or not?  Do they perform better than the MCS H or I series?  Also since these are out now, does anyone know if there are plans to put the remainder of the MCS servers EOL?  BTW, this would be for a new CUCM 8 installation.

Thanks,

Bill Hendrix 

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