[cisco-voip] vCUBE Experiences

Thu Jun 4 15:56:40 EDT 2020

My problem with software based resources is I have seen IOS code upgrades blow it up.  Never seen that with a hardware module at all.  I am all for virtualization for sure.  Thing is when you constantly have to upgrade software for compliance purposes do you want an integral feature to be fail safe or not and does the operational cost of dealing with those issues exceed the price?

We have a lot of software and hardware DSPs.  When I worked in the vendor world I always told the customer to pay for the hardware modules because they are problem free.  If they required a great many we would recommend DSP farms of them unless it was just cost prohibitive.  You would also of course have to factor in the load that places on the  devices handling the routing of calls as well.

Brian Palmer    | VoiceOps | DC6 3 355
904-905-8263  |  Internal Ext: 58263

From: cisco-voip <cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net> On Behalf Of Lelio Fulgenzi
Sent: Thursday, June 4, 2020 1:53 PM
To: Pawlowski, Adam <ajp26 at buffalo.edu>
Cc: Cisco VoIP Group <cisco-voip at puck.nether.net>
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] vCUBE Experiences

All we would need then is a PRI-to-USB dongle. ;)
Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 4, 2020, at 1:42 PM, Pawlowski, Adam <ajp26 at buffalo.edu<mailto:ajp26 at buffalo.edu>> wrote:
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Lelio,

Well – maybe. They rescinded video conferencing (and transcoding?) using the DSPs at some point. Audio transcoding is done in software all day – but the CPU of the ISR G2 platform at least is not its strong point, it is quickly snowed in by enough feature processing, records processing, debugging, etc. In a virtual environment there should be a stack of CPU available to do audio transcoding and get around that, but, then you don’t sell hardware.

Also yeah, 2.5 years thanks. I’ve lost track of time with all going on.

Best,

Adam

From: Lelio Fulgenzi <lelio at uoguelph.ca<mailto:lelio at uoguelph.ca>>
Sent: Thursday, June 4, 2020 12:45 PM
To: Pawlowski, Adam <ajp26 at buffalo.edu<mailto:ajp26 at buffalo.edu>>
Cc: Anthony Holloway <avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com<mailto:avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com>>; UC Penguin <gentoo at ucpenguin.com<mailto:gentoo at ucpenguin.com>>; Cisco VoIP Group <cisco-voip at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-voip at puck.nether.net>>
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] vCUBE Experiences

I’m guessing DSPs fall into the custom silicon branch of things. But I hear so much about software being able to use GPUs to do magic.

I could see the requirement of vDSP being a robust GPU installed on the chassis.

P S. 3900 eol dec 31 2022 so 2 1/2 years.
Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 4, 2020, at 12:38 PM, Pawlowski, Adam <ajp26 at buffalo.edu<mailto:ajp26 at buffalo.edu>> wrote:
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Oh and to keep this on vCUBE – the ISR G2 boxes that we run will be done for support in another … year and a half or so ?

Unfortunately there’s no “vPRI” that will help with DSP, until we change transport.

From: Pawlowski, Adam
Sent: Thursday, June 4, 2020 10:55 AM
To: 'Anthony Holloway' <avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com<mailto:avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com>>; UC Penguin <gentoo at ucpenguin.com<mailto:gentoo at ucpenguin.com>>
Cc: Cisco VoIP Group <cisco-voip at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-voip at puck.nether.net>>
Subject: RE: [cisco-voip] vCUBE Experiences

I’m not immersed in the industry by any means to say, but yes the cloud thing seems to be a moving target of opportunity to gain actual ROI or benefit from it, amidst changing budgets, feature demands, and licensing models.

I consider where my shop is to be on a bit of a lag on some trends which has its ups and downs. In this case we’re being asked to look at “cloud” now, but, narrowly focused to telephony. On one hand we may get shoved there by vendors, and cloud telephony is everywhere at this point, but, on the other hand the ROI ship has sort of sailed a bit.

When this appeared that you can run in AWS I … just don’t get it. I bet it has its applications if you don’t have space to run premise servers, if the whole city/state/country/world is your “WAN” as far as your business goes, sure. Or if you’re one of the shops still running old PBX and finally looking to bite the bullet, but, hasn’t that well run dry at this point?

From: cisco-voip <cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net>> On Behalf Of Anthony Holloway
Sent: Thursday, June 4, 2020 10:34 AM
To: UC Penguin <gentoo at ucpenguin.com<mailto:gentoo at ucpenguin.com>>
Cc: Cisco VoIP Group <cisco-voip at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-voip at puck.nether.net>>
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] vCUBE Experiences

I was just hearing from a Cisco person, who was saying something like "Everybody said they had to have it, but when we finally had an offer, there were literally ZERO people who did it."

And here I was thinking that my customer base was just cloud adverse and everyone else was jumping on the AWS band wagon.  Guess not.

On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 9:28 AM UC Penguin <gentoo at ucpenguin.com<mailto:gentoo at ucpenguin.com>> wrote:
Shared resources like AWS on the surface seem like a great idea for lab stuff. Looks like a great solution for on demand scaling etc though.

It just doesn’t seem to that useful for UC purposes and even if it were it would still be cheaper to buy one server and run it all on one box.

It’s interesting to watch management push for cloud everything and then slowly back away when they see the increased cost.

<image001.gif>

On Jun 4, 2020, at 09:11, Tim Smith <tim.smith at enject.com.au<mailto:tim.smith at enject.com.au>> wrote:
Back to CUCM on prem in lab via VPN.

The CUCM AWS deployment is out of reach for lab purposes.
That one is basically CUCM on VMWare in AWS (which is like the dedicated resources) - it's not AWS AMI format.

That said, I've got a great provider here in Australia that does VMWare based cloud (NSX).
That would be good for lab.

Cheers,

Tim

________________________________
From: Anthony Holloway <avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com<mailto:avholloway%2Bcisco-voip at gmail.com>>
Sent: Thursday, 4 June 2020 11:20 AM
To: Tim Smith <tim.smith at enject.com.au<mailto:tim.smith at enject.com.au>>
Cc: Cisco VoIP Group <cisco-voip at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-voip at puck.nether.net>>
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] vCUBE Experiences

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Was that trunk to Twilio for CME?  If not, what was on the backside of your gateway?  CUCM?  If so, was that in AWS too?

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 6:54 PM Tim Smith <tim.smith at enject.com.au<mailto:tim.smith at enject.com.au>> wrote:
Great question, also interested in hearing production stories.

I've deployed Virtual Acme Packet's previously - same limitations - no DSP's etc.
It was a little early and we had teething issues of appliance to virtual machine type stuff.. but through the updates this improved.

I've played with CUBE on CSR1000V on AWS - SIP trunks to Twilio - and it works great.
It's certainly so nice and easy to spin up.
I've also run CSR1000V in AWS for dynamic VPN's.. which again works great.

The DSP's are a nice fallback. You don't need them 99% of the time.. but when that 1% case comes up later - then it's certainly handy.
I think that's a big reason vCUBE is not quoted in customer land.
I assume it could be popular in service provider land though.

With that Acme deployment (and this was actually years ago now) - we were migrating, so we still had PRI gateways with plenty of free DSP's, which we could use for Transcoders if required.

Cheers,

Tim.

________________________________
From: cisco-voip <cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net>> on behalf of Anthony Holloway <avholloway+cisco-voip at gmail.com<mailto:avholloway%2Bcisco-voip at gmail.com>>
Sent: Thursday, 4 June 2020 7:06 AM
To: Cisco VoIP Group <cisco-voip at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-voip at puck.nether.net>>
Subject: [cisco-voip] vCUBE Experiences

EXTERNAL SENDER WARNING. This message was sent from outside your organisation. Please do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the source of this email and know the content is safe.

Anyone have some vCUBEs out in production for a while, and willing to share their feelings and/or experiences with it?

Anything from deployment, to restrictions, to licensing, to upgrade processes, lessons learned, etc?

I think the obvious thing is the lack of DSP/PVDM since this is a virtual machine, but what else?

I don't come across these in the field at all, and I don't see them being proposed or quoted these days, despite vCUBE having been around for a few years now.
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