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The following figure illustrates the architecture of Cisco HCM-F application node.
Cisco HCM-F application node delivers the following main functions and services:
Centralized database for the Cisco HCS solution: the Shared Data Repository (SDR)
Synchronization of the SDR with domain managers: Multiple synchronization services populate the SDR and keep it updated when configuration changes are applied through these domain managers: The following services populate and update the SDR:
CUCDMSync service updates the SDR when configuration changes are applied through the Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager (CUCDM).
VCenterSync service updates the SDR when configuration changes are applied through vCenter.
HCS UCSMSync service monitors configuration data of Cisco UCS Managers and maintains syncrhonization between the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository.
North Bound Interface (NBI): Populates and updates SDR
Cisco HCM-F Administrative UI: Allows configuration of Cisco HCM-F services.
Services for automatic configuration of the Prime Collaboration Assurance (PCA):
HCS Fulfillment service
HCS DMA-SA service
Note | Based on data extracted from the SDR, these two services work together to automatically configure the PCA to monitor Unified Communications Applications and customer equipment. |
HCS Provisioning Adapter Service
Note | Fulfillment and CHPA work together to automatically configure CUCM applications with the data needed for those applications to be monitored by PCA. Other applications such as CUCxn and CUP must be manually configured to be monitored by PCA. |
HCS Infrastructure Platform Automation (IPA) service: provides Infrastructure Platform Automation of UC application VM creation.
HCS License Manager (HLM) service: manages licenses for UC applications.
HCS Northbound Interface (NBI) API service: provides an interface to the service provider BSS or OSS through a SOAP web services interface.
Unity Connection Provisioning Adapter service: For deployments without CUCDM, UCPA uses the UCCxn REST interface to pull customer data directly from the UCCxn server for input into Service Inventory reports.
Service Inventory: Provides the service provider with reports on customers, subscribers, and devices. These reports may be used by the service provider to audit customer admin provisioning, and generate billing reports and change reports for their customers, based on MACD operations.
The following figure illustrates the architecture of Cisco HCM-F Web Services (WS) node.
In release 9.2(1) the Cisco HCM-F web services node is an API Gateway Proxy node that delivers the following main functions and services:
The Shared Data Repository (SDR) is the central database for Cisco HCS. This repository stores data that is common to multiple Cisco HCS components.
The Shared Data Repository provides Cisco HCS with the following benefits:
Reduces duplicate data entry and data inconsistency
Integrates Cisco HCS components, which provides architectural stability
Shared Data Repository is utilized by HCS License Manager, Service Inventory, and Platform Manager
The Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository supports the following functional areas:
HCM-Fulfillment — Allows a service provider to provision a new enterprise customer with voice, video and other collaboration and mobility services, as required.
HCM-Service Assurance — Supports fault and performance management.
One Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository is installed when you install Cisco HCM-F on the Cisco HCM-F platform.
Internal components of the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository identify the type of client that is communicating with the database; for example, the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository can identify whether the client serves as a sync agent. Because of this ability to identify the client, the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository assists with debugging by allowing the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository to record the client name in log messages. An internal component of the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository prevents clients that are accessing the same data from overwriting changes that occur at the same time. In addition, the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository provides clients with change notification.
The following sources update the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository:
Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager
The Cisco HCM-F northbound interface API
VCenterSync, UCSMSync, and CUCDMSync—These synchronization services read data from the data source and write the data to the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository
The Cisco HCM-F administrative interface
External clients, such as the service provider Operations Support System (OSS)/Business Support System (BSS), interact with the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository through Cisco HCM-F northbound interface APIs.
The Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository indicates whether data is read-only to clients such as the Cisco HCS administrative interface. In this case, the administrative interface indicates that the administrator cannot edit the content.
Note | Notice of deprecation: API Gateway Planning is going to be removed in a future release. |
For more information, see the API Gateway Proxy Developer Guide .
To ensure that the API Gateway Proxy is highly available, you can deploy two or more nodes of the API Gateway Proxy with a partner-provided load balancer. The API Gateway Proxy nodes run completely independent of one another. If a node fails, API Proxy service transparently continues on the other node.
Infrastructure Platform Automation (IPA) automates the provisioning steps for on-boarding customers inside both the Cisco Unified Communications Manager application and the Cisco Unity Connection by using an XML configuration file that is loaded in Infrastructure Manager within the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation-Fulfillment (HCM-F) interface. The automation process includes Virtual Machine cloning and running identity on the Cisco Unified Communications Manager or Cisco Unity Connection Publisher and Subscriber Virtual Machines. If the Virtual Machines are pre-cloned, for example by Cloud-O or manually, IPA performs only identity operations on Virtual Machines.
Both Unified Communications Manager clusters and Cisco Unity Connection clusters can have only one Publisher, and only one Unity Subscriber node per cluster is supported. The IPA XML must always contain the Unified Communications Manager Cluster information, but the Cisco Unity Connection Cluster information is optional. You can deploy Cisco Unified Communications Manager without Cisco Unity Connection but not the reverse. Cisco Unity Connection Publishers and Subscribers both use the skip install process. Cisco Unity Connection and Cisco Unified Communications Manager share the same ISO file for installation, but they each have their own OVA file which must be used for deploying VMs for IPA use.
Note |
For additional information on Prime Collaboration Deployment and HCS see Use Prime Collaboration Deployment with UC Applications |
The Cisco HCS Fulfillment service is a standalone Java application. It performs the following functions:
To trigger provisioning of Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance, the fulfillment service automatically detects data changes in the SDR related to devices, and triggers the DMA-SA to provision those devices.
To trigger the Cisco HCS Provisioning Adapter (CHPA) service to add some Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance configuration to Cisco Unified Communication Manager application nodes.
To automatically link a virtual machine to an application instance within the SDR, a blade to an ESXi Host, and a customer to Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance.
The following sections describe the functions of the fulfillment service.
The Cisco HCS Fulfillment service responds to notifications of changes sent by the SDR and instructs the Domain Manager Adaptors (DMAs) to set up the Domain Managers to reflect those changes. The Fulfillment service responds to change notification when devices are added, deleted, or modified in the SDR.
The Fulfillment service responds to data changes in the SDR related to the following types of devices:
Application instances (such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco Unified Presence)
Customer equipment
For example, when new devices are added to the SDR, the Fulfillment service instructs the DMA-SA to start monitoring those devices. The Fulfillment service also responds when devices are deleted or changed in the SDR and instructs the DMA-SA to make the required changes to the Prime Collaboration configuration to reflect those changes in the SDR. The Fulfillment service also triggers the CHPA to perform configuration changes on the Cisco Unified Communications Manager for monitoring by Prime Collaboration.
A second function of the Fulfillment service is to automatically link various parts of the configuration together. HCM-F obtains provisioning data from several sources, including Cisco Unified Communications Domain Managers, UCS Managers, and vCenters. Service Assurance requires data from these 3 sources to be linked in certain ways to enable accurate fault correlation and root cause analysis.
Note | The fulfillment service auto-linking is disabled by default. When enabled, auto-linking only recognizes the number of customers assigned to the fulfillment service. Auto-linking does not recognize or consider device counts. |
Unified communications applications are synced into the SDR from Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager.
To manually link a virtual machine to an application instance, follow this procedure:
Note | This procedure is very time-consuming even for relatively small numbers of cluster applications. Cisco strongly recommends using non-overlapping hostnames. |
The Fulfillment service can be configured to automatically link each new customer configured in the SDR with Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. which monitors that customer's applications. Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance has a current capacity (the number of customers and devices currently monitoring) and a maximum capacity. If configured, the fulfillment service automatically links the customer that has the lowest current capacity and has not exceeded the maximum capacity. If Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance is not configured below the maximum capacity, no automatic linkage is made.
Follow this procedure to disable automatic blade to ESXi Host linkage:
Overview
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance is a member of the Cisco Unified Communications family of products. It provides a comprehensive and efficient solution for network management and allows you to provision and monitor Cisco Unified Communications deployments.
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance monitors and evaluates the current status of both the IP communications infrastructure and the underlying transport infrastructure in your network. Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance uses open interfaces such as Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to remotely poll data from different devices in the IP communications deployment.
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance does not deploy any agent software on the devices being monitored and therefore is not disruptive to system operations.
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance increases productivity of network managers by enabling them to isolate problems quickly using the following tools:
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance also performs the following functions:
Migration
If not already done so, we recommend that you migrate from Cisco Prime Unified Operations Manager to Cisco Prime Collaboration using the Cisco HCM-F CLI command:
utils migrate cuom_to_prime_collab
This moves all devices at once, retaining the association level to the domain manager.
You can also migrate individual clusters, customer equipment, or customers using the Cisco HCM-F GUI or the Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager GUI.
Supported solutions
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance supports various solutions:
Supported Devices
Device | 8.6.2 | 9.0.1/9.1.1 | 9.2.1 | 10.0(1) | 10.1(1) | 10.1(2) | 10.6(1) | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CUCM | CUOM | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | |
CUCXN | CUOM | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | |
CUxAC | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | Attendant Console, 3rd party, basic monitoring only | |||
CUP | CUOM | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | |
Contact Center: UCCE | CUOM | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | |
Contact Center: CVP | CUOM | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | |
CUBE-ENT | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||
CUBE-SP | CUOM (manual) | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
Finesse | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||
MediaSense | CUOM | CUOM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||
CER | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
vPGW | PCA | PCA | PCA | 3rd party, basic monitoring only | ||||
HCM-F | CUOM (manual) | CUOM (manual) | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | All multi-node components. 3rd party, basic monitoring only | |
EIM/CIM | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
VCS (E & C) | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
CTX | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
TP Server | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
MCU | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
IVR | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
CTMS | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | Cisco TelePresence Multipoint Switch | |||
TMS | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
TP Video Endpoint | PCA | PCA | PCA | PCA | ||||
CUIC | IM (manual) | IM (manual) | IM (manual) | PCA | PCA | Not monitored post-9.2 | ||
vCenter | IM (manual) | IM | IM | PCA | PCA | Not monitored post-9.2 | ||
CCDM | IM (manual) | IM | IM | PCA | AKA: CCMP, Exony Not monitored post-9.2 | |||
CUCDM | IM (manual) | IM | IM | PCA | PCA | Not monitored post-9.2 | ||
CUOM | IM (manual) | IM | IM | No part of HCS post-9.2 |
In the Cisco HCS architecture, Domain Managers are components that manage, monitor, or control other solution services. Examples of domain managers are Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance, the Unified Communications Domain Manager, and vCenter.
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance is a Cisco network management server for Cisco voice products. In the Cisco HCS solution, it is a domain manager that performs monitoring of Cisco HCS network applications and devices. It receives events from the monitored devices and forwards them to the Event Collector for processing.
The Domain Manager Adapter for the Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance (DMA-SA) integrates into the Cisco HCS solution. The DMA is an interface between the SDR and Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. The key function of the DMA is to automatically configure Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance to monitor Cisco HCS devices and applications based on data from the SDR.
A second function of the DMA is to monitor Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance limits and generate an HCM-F alarm when thresholds are reached.
The DMA-SA relies on the HCS Fulfillment service to detect changes on the SDR. The HCS Fulfillment service monitors the SDR database for changes. In response to those changes, the HCS Fulfillment service then instructs the DMA-SA to configure the Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance to reflect changes on the SDR.
The DMA-SA can perform the following configuration changes:
For instance, when a new device is added through vCenter and configured through the Unified Communications Domain Manager, the VCenterSync service and the CUCDMSync service update the SDR with the change. The Fulfillment service responds to the change in the SDR and instructs the DMA-SA to begin monitoring the new device. The DMA-SA then reads the device details from the SDR and programmatically configures the device (through SOAP) for monitoring in Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. The CHPA also configures devices for monitoring.
Note that for the devices to be configured for monitoring, the following conditions must also be met:
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance must be added on the Cisco HCM-F Infrastructure Manager Administrative UI. It must also be configured with an IP address in the service provider space and a hostname, using ADMIN credentials.
The customer (or application cluster or customer equipment) is linked to Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. This function can be performed manually through the Cisco HCM-F UI, or automatically by the Fulfillment service. The automatic function can be enabled or disabled with the command line interface (CLI) using the command set hcs link auto-primecollab-linkage. The state of this function can be displayed using the command show hcs link auto-primecollab-linkage.
Credentials have been added for the device in the Cisco HCM-F UI HCM-F Infrastructure Manager Administrative Interface. Credentials for the devices can be added in two ways:
You can define a set of default credentials for each device type (
). When a new device is synchronized from the Unified Communications Domain Manager through the CUCDMSync, the default credentials associated with that device type will be automatically assigned to the new device. This is the recommended method and works well if all devices have the same SNMP credentials.You can assign credentials to specific devices after they are synchronized to the SDR. This can be done on the Cluster Application page (
). This method should be used for devices that have different SNMP credentials from the defaults.For Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance to monitor UC applications and customer equipment devices, these devices must be configured with event destinations (SNMP trap, syslog, or RTMT API) to Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. The CHPA automatically configures event destinations on the Cisco Unified Communications Manager, but other devices must be manually configured to forward events to Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance must also be manually configured with a trap destination to the Cisco HCS partner OSS system for processing.
The DMA-SA configures Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance to monitor UC Applications and customer equipment devices, but it does not collect events from the devices. After Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance has been configured to monitor the devices, it collects events from the monitored devices, aggregates them and forwards them to the HCS partner OSS system in HCM- SA. HCM-SA also provides an NBI API for integration with the service provider MoM.
For information on how to configure event destinations on Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance, refer to the appropriate documentation.
Cisco HCS Service Inventory is an application that provides reports for service providers for billing and audit purposes. These reports contain data on customers, subscribers, devices, and other details that are currently provisioned on Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager. In addition, Service Inventory can generate reports directly from Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unity Connection application servers for customers that are provisioned in Cisco HCM-F that do not have a Unified Communications Domain Manager configured. Service Inventory automatically transfers the report files daily to remote SFTP servers. The service providers use these reports to generate billing records for their customers.
Currently, Service Inventory can generate reports from a Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unity Connection running UC Application Software Version 8.6 or later.
You can configure and schedule the report generation through the Service Inventory administrative interface. Through this interface, you can also manage credentials and configure general settings for Service Inventory.
At the time that is specified in the Service Inventory configuration, Service Inventory sends a real-time query request to Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager or the appropriate UC Application for information. Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager or the UC Application generates the necessary files and sends the files to Service Inventory through SFTP. Service Inventory creates a backup of the files, creates the report, and transfers the report to the SFTP servers that are configured in the Service Inventory administrative interface.
The generated report contains data for the previous 24 hours, up to and including the end time that you specify on the Overview page in the Service Inventory administrative interface. The generated reports get backed up for a configured amount of time. The default is 60 days.
Service Inventory provides On Demand Inventory and Location reporting. These On Demand reports allow the administrator to generate reports at any time without having to alter the reporting schedule. Location Summary reports generate a report to indicate the number of devices and subscribers per location.
Note | Location reports require an Inventory report to be available on the system or an error will be generated. |
Three types of customer/reseller reports can also be generated, SI reports, Summary reports and MACD reports.
The reports use a Cisco common format. For more information on this format and the data that is generated, see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, Release 10.6(1) Maintain and Operate Guide.
For instructions on how to perform configuration and scheduling tasks through the Service Inventory administrative interface, see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, Release 10.6(1) Maintain and Operate Guide.
The Platform Manager is an installation, upgrade, restart and backup management client for the following Cisco Unified Communications applications:
Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service
Cisco Unified Communications Manager
Cisco Unity Connection
The Platform Manager allows you to manage and monitor the installation, upgrade, restart and backup of these servers. You can access the Platform Manager through the Cisco HCM-F administrative interface.
The Platform Manager organizes servers into server groups. All of the servers in a server group can be upgraded, switched, and restarted at the same time. Server groups are user-defined and consist of servers from multiple clusters. All of the servers in a particular group, however, must have the same product. for example, you cannot mix Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service nodes in the same server group.
Server groups allow you to logically join together different servers on which you want to perform common tasks as a group, such as installation, upgrades, and restarts.
The Platform Manager allows you to configure the system server inventory as well as select, schedule, and monitor upgrades of one or more servers across one or more clusters.
The server inventory can also be automatically synchronized from the Shared Data Repository so that it does not have to be manually configured.
The Platform Manager offers a wide range of different user-defined servers types to accommodate the management of potentially thousands of servers.
After you have configured all of your servers and server groups within Platform Manager, you can create a variety of tasks that help you streamline any installation, upgrade, or restart process. You can also automate backup tasks of your system using the Backup Schedule feature.
For instructions on how to perform Platform Manager configuration tasks , see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment Install and Configure Guide, Release 10.6(1).
Cisco HCM-F Real-Time Monitoring Tool (RTMT) runs as a client-side application and uses HTTPS to monitor system performance. RTMT can connect directly to a device through HTTPS to troubleshoot system problems. Tasks such as alarm and performance monitoring updates continue to run on the server in the background even when RTMT is not connected to the server.
HCM-F installation for Release 9.2.1 consists of one application server (node) and may contain either a single or multiple web services (WS) nodes. While RTMT can provide troubleshooting support for more than one server, you can connect to and monitor only one server per RTMT session.
RTMT allows you to perform the following tasks:
Monitor a set of predefined management objects and performance counters that monitor the health of the server to which RTMT is connected.
Configure and update alert settings for the management objects and performance counters (in the form of email messages).
The HCM-F server monitors the alert conditions and when values go over or below user-configured thresholds, generates alerts. RTMT does not need to be running on your computer in order for alerts to be generated by the server. Alerts are displayed in RTMT in the form of alert logs.
Collect and download or view traces. Traces can be viewed in the viewers that are built into RTMT.
View syslog messages in SysLog Viewer.
For more information on RTMT, see the Administration Guide for Cisco HCM-F Real-Time Monitoring Tool and Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment Maintain and Operate Guide.
The Cisco HCM-F administrative interface is the user interface to the Cisco HCM-F services. It allows you to perform management and configuration tasks on the Cisco HCM-F services.
From any user PC in your network, you can browse into a server that is running the Cisco HCM-F administrative interface and log in with administrative privileges: https://your-HCM-F-server:<portnumber>.
The Cisco HCM-F administrative interface uses HTTPS to secure the communication between the browser and the web server.
The Cisco HCM-F administrative interface provides the following administrative interfaces:
The Service Inventory administrative interface allows you to perform configuration and scheduling tasks on the Service Inventory application. This interface allows you to configure and schedule the generation and transmission of three types of Service Inventory billing reports, SI reports, Summary reports and MACD reports. Service Inventory transfers these report files to remote servers using SFTP. Service providers use these reports to generate bills and audit their customers.
For more information on the Service Inventory application and configuration tasks you can perform through the Service Inventory Administrative Interface, see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment Maintain and Operate Guide, Release 10.6(1).
The Infrastructure Manager Administrative Interface allows you to provision and query the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository. The Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository is a repository of data that represents the Cisco HCS configuration of data centers, customers, and management components in the service provider network. This repository is then used by HCM-Service Assurance to provide more effective, detailed, and accurate operational alarms and events.
The Platform Manager Administrative Interface is the user interface to the Platform Manager service. This service is an upgrade management client, which allows you to manage upgrades for Cisco Unified Presence, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and Cisco Unity Connection in the Cisco HCS.
The Platform Manager allows you to organize the servers in groups. Then, you can create a variety of tasks to manage and monitor the installation, upgrade and restart process of multiple servers. You can also automate backup tasks of your system using the Backup Schedule feature.
For more information on the functions of the Platform Manager, see Cisco HCS Platform Manager.
For instructions on how to perform Platform Manager configuration tasks , see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment Install and Configure Guide, Release 10.6(1).
The Cisco HCS North Bound Interface Web Service is a set of SOAP APIs that expose Cisco HCM-F functionality to the service provider OSS/BSS. These APIs provide the ability to configure, service, and control a Cisco HCM-F deployment.
This web service is the external interface to the Cisco HCS Shared Data Repository.
This web service offers CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) APIs to view and modify data in the HCS Shared Data Repository.
For more information on the Shared Data Repository Web Service API, see the Developer Guide for Cisco Hosted Mediation Collaboration Fulfillment.
This web service API controls Cisco HCM-F related tasks, such as starting manual synchronization jobs, restarting jobs, and non-CRUD Share Data Repository operations.
For more information on the Fulfillment Web Service API, see the Developer Guide for Cisco Hosted Mediation Collaboration Fulfillment.
This web service is the external interface to the Service Inventory application. It allows you to schedule, configure, and execute the generation of Service Inventory billing reports.
For more information on the Service Inventory Web Service APIs, see the Developer Guide for Cisco Hosted Mediation Collaboration Fulfillment.
This web service provides an interface for HCM-F administrators to perform license management. The license management functionality includes getting or setting the global deployment mode, creating or deleting an HCS Licence Manager, assigning a customer or UC cluster to an HCS Prime License Manager, and more.
For more information on the HCS License Manager Web Service API, see the Developer Guide for Cisco Hosted Mediation Collaboration Fulfillment.