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This chapter provides an overview of the upgrade process for contact center components, the software releases that are involved in the upgrade process, and the different upgrade strategies that can be used based on the size of the customer network.
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The following upgrade strategies are recommendations only, as no formal upgrade testing was done for the UC 9.0 system release. |
The Cisco Unified Communications System is a full-featured business communications system built into an intelligent IP network. It enables voice, data, and video communications for businesses of all sizes. The Cisco Unified Communications System is defined around commonly deployed enterprise topology models in North America and European & Emerging Markets (EUEM).
Cisco Systems provides an integrated system to meet customer needs. The system contains a number of communications products that are designed, developed, tested, documented, sold, and supported as one entity. This system is built upon individual IP telephony and contact center products including, but not limited, to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management Enterprise (Unified ICME), Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (Unified CVP), Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (Unified CCE), Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (Unified CCX), Cisco Unified IP Integrated Voice Response (Unified IP IVR), Cisco Unified Intelligence Center (Unified Intelligence Center), Cisco MediaSense (MediaSense), Cisco Finesse (Finesse) and voice-capable gateways and routers.
Cisco contact center solutions allow you to move beyond today's contact center to a customer interaction network by creating a better customer experience, making customer-service agents more efficient and productive, improving contact center reporting, and extending the workforce with expert mobile and remote agents.
Cisco Unified Communications System testing is a process for specifying (designing) and validating the interoperability of enterprise voice products to ensure that they work together as an integrated system.
The upgrade process discussed for this Cisco Unified Communications System release addresses different upgrade paths and strategies, preparation for the upgrade operation, order of operations such as the sequence in which the contact center components should be upgraded, and other dependencies such as backward compatibility of software.
This chapter only provides information related to upgrading components that are present in the base release set that is to be upgraded.
This chapter does not provide installation, upgrade or backup procedures for:
A release set is defined as the combination of products, components, and software versions that were tested to work together as an integrated Cisco Unified Communication System. A particular system release is also referred to as a release set.
A base release or release set is defined as the starting release set that is being upgraded. A target release or release set is defined as the ending release set to which the base release set is being upgraded.
The systems that are involved in the upgrade and discussed in this document include:
For upgrade information on Cisco Unified Communications System Release 9.0(1) IP Telephony components, see: http://preview.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/uc_system/UC9.0.1/ipt_system_inst_upg/VTGS_BK_S3E53B1F_00_system-installation-and-upgrade-manual.pdf
This section provides a roadmap of the high-level upgrade tasks:
Step 1 | Review your hardware and software requirements. For instance, verify that the deployed hardware configurations and operating system support the target release and are ready for an upgrade. | ||
Step 2 | Perform all required hardware equipment checks. For instance, verify that the DVD ROM drive in the server where you plan to perform the upgrade tasks is operational before you start the upgrade process. | ||
Step 3 |
Ensure that you have backed up all configuration files prior to performing an upgrade of your system, in the event that your upgrade is unsuccessful and you need to restore your previous configuration. For information on backing up and restoring major contact center components, see: http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/docs/iam/unified/ipcc861/Backing_Up_and_Restoring_Components.html. |
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Step 4 | If necessary, remove any engineering specials or service releases for components that are related to the previous base release version before upgrading to the target release version. | ||
Step 5 | Access and download the license files required to upgrade (or newly install) and operate the appropriate software at: http://www.cisco.com/go/license. | ||
Step 6 |
Upgrade the existing network components from the base release set to the target release set.
Use the recommended upgrade strategies described in System upgrade strategies to perform the upgrade. The upgrade strategies you select should depend on a number of factors, such as: |
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Step 7 |
Perform verification and validation testing in between upgrading components in multiple stages to ensure that the components in the network interoperate. For information on verifying and validating multistage upgrades and interoperability of components, see Verifying Multistage System Upgrades in System upgrade
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Step 8 | Install any new components supported by the target release in the network and configure them. | ||
Step 9 |
Remove and/or replace any components from your network that are not part of the target release or have reached EOL (end-of-life) and/or EOS (end-of-sale). Follow proper procedures to uninstall these components.
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This section lists the components included in the base release set involved in the upgrade process, the components that have to be newly installed for the target release set, and components that must be uninstalled because they are not part of the target release set.
The following table contains a listing of components that are part of the base release set that should be upgraded to Cisco Unified Communications System Release 9.0(1).
Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management Enterprise and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise |
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Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management Enterprise and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Operating System |
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Cisco Unified Contact Center Express/Unified IP IVR Operating System |
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Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service (formerly Cisco Unified Presence) 1 |
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Cisco Unified SIP Proxy |
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Cisco Unified IP Phones 7900 Series (7921G (Wireless), 7940, 7940G, 7960, 7960G, 7962, 7970, and 7970G) |
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Cisco Unified IP Phones 6900 Series (6911, 6921, 6941 6961, and 6945) |
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Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (5520, 5540, 5580) Services |
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Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance 5500 AIP Security Services Module (IPS) |
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Cisco IOS Mainline Release 2 |
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Cisco 3825, 3845 (Unified CVP VXML, voice/data, H.323, SIP, MGCP, IOS-based Transcoders and Conference Bridges, and Cisco Unified Border Element gateways) |
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Cisco AS5400XM (Unified CVP VXML, voice, H.323, SIP and PSTN gateways) |
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Cisco Unified Border Element Enterprise Edition for Cisco ISR Series |
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Some components are new to the Cisco Unified Communications System Release 9.0(1) release set. You must install these new components and configure them into the network (rather than upgrade them).
This section lists components that are new in the Release 9.0(1) release set when you upgrade from Release 8.5(1).
The following deployment and components were removed from the Cisco Unified Communications System Release 9.0(1) release set (and previous release sets) in relation to the base release sets:
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For a list of recommended replacements (if any) for components that are no longer supported or sold, see the EOS and EOL website at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/prod_end_of_life.html. For Cisco EOS and EOL policy, see the information at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/products_end-of-life_policy.html. |
The figure below illustrates the upgrade paths available for Cisco Unified Communications System
Release 9.0(1) in contact center environments – from Cisco Unified Communications System Release 8.5(1) to Cisco Unified Communications System Release 9.0(1).
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The horizontal arrows represent the upgrade paths within an individual release, The vertical arrows indicate the upgrade paths from one release to the next. |
This section discusses the upgrade strategies for all components in the target release deployment scenarios. Details of individual components upgrades are not described unless additional information or clarification is required.
The following upgrade strategies are available for use when upgrading to the target release:
Note |
We recommend that you do not use backup and restore procedures to perform the prestaged configuration on the parallel network. In many applications, you are required to use the same hostname and IP address for the backup as well as the restore process. This can prevent you from creating a truly parallel network, as two systems cannot exist on the same network with identical hostnames and IP addresses. |
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Hybrid system refers only to interproduct versions, not to intraproduct versions. For instance, all Unified Communications Manager servers in the same cluster, or all servers that are part of the same Unified ICME system, will remain at the same software version. |
All components in the network start at the base release set and all components are upgraded to the target release set software within a single maintenance window. Because all components are upgraded within a single maintenance window, interoperability is not required between the base and target release sets.
The single-stage upgrade on existing hardware approach is typically not recommended for large customer sites and networks, because it has to be performed within a single maintenance window.
The following figure shows an example of the single maintenance window that is involved in the single-stage upgrade on existing hardware approach.
A parallel Cisco Unified Communications System network should be built using new hardware and prestaged with configuration to support the existing production network. All users can be then moved from the existing production network to the new network operating with the target release set software either in a single maintenance window (using flash-cut) or in several maintenance windows (using shrink-and-grow).
The single-stage upgrade on new hardware approach is not recommended for large customer sites and networks for the following reasons:
The following figure shows an example of the maintenance windows that are involved in the single-stage upgrade on new hardware approach.
Individual components and/or sites can be upgraded in stages, from the base release set software to the target release set software, during separate maintenance windows. At the completion of each intermediate stage, the individual site exists as a hybrid system with a mix of the following:
The multistage system upgrade on existing hardware is the recommended approach for medium-to-large networks. In this case, individual components within a single site and/or individual sites in a multisite environment are progressively upgraded over the span of several days or weekends.
This type of staging is requird because:
You can view a staged upgrade as a series of maintenance windows separated by intermaintenance window intervals. During each maintenance window, one or more components of the system or a subset of the components is upgraded.
Customers typically have a maintenance window during which service disruptions are likely to have minimal impact and affect only a limited number of users, for example, during the night or during a weekend.
Before the staged upgrade is completed, the whole network exists in a partially upgraded state where some components have been upgraded to the target release set software and the remaining components are operating with the base release set software.
Backward compatibility of the components is critical during the staged upgrade, so that target release set components are able to interoperate with the base release set components. If any component is not backward compatible, this can potentially result in prolonged periods of service outage spanning several maintenance windows (possibly several weeks).
Therefore, during multistage upgrades, it is mandatory to have interoperability between the base and target release set software versions.
The following figure shows an example of the maintenance windows that are involved in the multistage system upgrade on existing hardware approach.
Components are upgraded from the base release set to the target release set on a site-by-site basis during separate maintenance windows.
At the completion of each maintenance window, a hybrid network will exist across multiple sites. Within each site, either a single-stage or multistage system upgrade strategy can be used to upgrade that particular site's components from the base to the target release set.
Interworking can be expected among sites with pure base release set versions and sites with pure target release set versions as shown in the figure below. However, interworking will not be possible between these pure sites and hybrid system sites.
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A component that is common to multiple sites, such as a shared Unified ICME system, may impact the interoperability itself, the order in which sites may be upgraded, or which sites must be upgraded concurrently. |
Users can be moved in stages from the existing production network to the new network operating with the target release set software. The number of users on the existing base network will shrink while the number on the target network will grow correspondingly.
This migration process can span several weeks and, sometime months, if necessary. During this upgrade approach, it is essential that the two networks, existing and new, are able to communicate with each other.
The following figure shows an example of the maintenance windows that are involved in the multisite migration approach.
The following table provides a summary of the preceding upgrade strategies.
One time slot, for example, during a weekend maintenance window |
For information about support for legacy products and third-party product interoperability with Cisco Unified Communications contact center products, see the Cisco Interoperability Portal at:
http://www.cisco.com/go/interoperability
For software and hardware compatibility and interoperability information about Unified Communications Manager, Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Unified IP IVR and other Cisco Unified Communications contact center products, see the following sites: