Table Of Contents
Configuring an MCU in Resource Manager
MCU Overview
MCU Cascading
MCU Profile
Displaying an MCU
Synchronizing an MCU
Meeting Types
Accessing Meeting Types
Built-in Meeting Types
Deploying Meeting Types
Scheduling a Meeting with a Meeting Type
Configuring an MCU in Resource Manager
This section includes information about configuring an MCU. Topics in this section include:
•
MCU Overview
•MCU Cascading
•Synchronizing an MCU
•Meeting Types
•Deploying Meeting Types
•Scheduling a Meeting with a Meeting Type
MCU Overview
The Cisco Videoconferencing 3500 Series MCU products are where multi-point video conferences are hosted. Resource Manager reserves MCU resources, schedules MCU conferences, and controls live MCU meetings. In order for Resource Manager to correctly manage an MCU, it needs to retrieve configuration information from the MCU.
MCU Cascading
Resource Manager is able to manage multiple MCUs as a pool of resources. You can cascade MCUs to reduce potential drain on network resources, increase the efficiency of MCU usage, and allow large conferences to be held. The following points about cascading should be noted:
•The Meeting Type (MCU Service) representing the required meeting must be available on all participating MCUs. For example, if the meeting uses MCU service 81, then 81 must exist on the master MCU and on the slave MCUs.
•Each master MCU uses one port for every slave MCU.
•Each slave MCU used in a cascaded meeting requires one additional port.
•Only one cascading port exists between the master MCU and the slave MCU; therefore, only one participant from the slave MCU can send video for mixing and only one participant from the slave MCU can be seen by other participants in the meeting.
•Supports only one level of cascading. All slave MCUs must cascade to the same master MCU.
•The administrator must define a default system level property that determines the cascading behavior. Any scheduled meeting can use the default behavior or override it by manually selecting a different behavior.
To cascade an MCU, use the following procedure
Procedure
Step 1 From the sidebar menu, go to Admin > Advanced Settings.
Step 2 On the Default Meeting Settings tab, choose one of the following options from the Prioritize field:
–Bandwidth—Resource Manager allocates resources to conserve bandwidth. For example, at a site with two users and an MCU, Resource Manager creates a local meeting. In some cases, this may cause a meeting to cascade to conserve bandwidth, even though a single MCU is available to host the meeting.
–Delay—Resource Manager allocates resources to ensure the best video quality. Resource Manager invites all users directly to a main MCU, whatever their location. Since Delay can be costly in terms of bandwidth, it is recommended that you take topology into account before selecting the Delay option.
–Local MCU—Select this option if Resource Manager has more than one MCU and there are at least two meeting participants. Resource Manager invites all of the participating terminals to meetings hosted on their respective local MCUs (according to IP Topology settings), and then cascades these meetings together to form a single conference.
Step 3 Click OK to save the preferred behavior as the default.
MCU Profile
This section contains information about the MCU profile.
Procedure
Step 1 In the sidebar menu, choose Admin > Resource Management > Resource Management > MCU to open the MCU configuration window.
Step 2 In MCU Profile > Basic > General section, enter the name of the MCU to be displayed in the system in the Name field.
Step 3 From the Model list, select the MCU model. Resource Manager manages each MCU according to its version and type.
Step 4 If you want the MCU to operate in H.323 mode, select a gatekeeper from the Registered to list. This is the gatekeeper to which the MCU registers.
Step 5 If you want to register the MCU to operate in SIP mode only (without H.323), check SIP Only. The MCU is not required to register to an MCU and the Registered field is inactive.
Step 6 From the Location list, choose the device island to which the MCU belongs.
Note If the IP Topology tab is hidden, then the Location field is also hidden.
Step 7 Go to Basic > Advanced, and then enter the login name and login password of the MCU. These should be the same as the MCU web interface login name and password.
Step 8 On the Advanced tab, you can customize the SNMP port and Community names that Resource Manager uses to communicate with the MCU.
Step 9 If Resource Manager cannot connect to a newly configured MCU, the MCU is added but its status is Offline in Basic > Advanced. To try to reconnect to the MCU, select Online, and then click OK.
Step 10 In Basic > Advanced, select one of the following options:
–Online—Default setting for all MCUs.
–Offline-up to date—To set the date when the MCU should be online again, click the calendar button and select a date. Resource Manager does not bring the MCU online automatically; you must bring the MCU online manually on the specified date.
If you want the MCU to be permanently set to the offline option, check the Permanently check box. This activates fields in the window for editing that are otherwise read-only.
If you take an MCU offline, the following results occur:
•Resource Manager cannot schedule meetings for the offline MCU.
•All meetings currently in progress are terminated. Resource Manager attempts to reschedule upcoming meetings for the offline MCU on other MCUs that use the same services and have sufficient, available resources. If no replacement MCUs are available when the MCU status is changed back to online, upcoming meetings are lost and not restored.
•Resource Manager attempts to reschedule all meetings scheduled to this MCU from the time the MCU goes offline to the date specified in the Offline-up to date field of the Modify MCU window. If the MCU is set as Offline > Permanently, Resource Manager attempts to reschedule all future meetings.
Step 11 To delete the MCU, take the MCU offline permanently and then click the Delete button that appears.
Displaying an MCU
You can search for an MCU by name and display its details.
Procedure
Step 1 Enter the name or part of the name of an MCU in the Name field.
Step 2 Click Search.
If the MCU is located, the MCU name and details appear in the list on the MCU tab.
Information in the Connection column indicates whether or not a communication connection is established between Resource Manager and the MCU.
Information in the Status column indicates whether or not the MCU is currently online or offline.
Synchronizing an MCU
When a new MCU is initially configured, its internal information is downloaded to Resource Manager. If there are any subsequent physical changes to the MCU itself, click Update in the MCU Profile window to update the MCU information in Resource Manager.
Meeting Types
A meeting type in Resource Manager is the equivalent to the service definition of an MCU. Services should be defined in the MCU first and then synchronized to Resource Manager. In the Meeting Types section, retrieve services from MCUs configured in the system and then save them to Resource Manager. Resource Manager then distributes these services to other MCUs according to your specific deployment requirements. Meeting Types in Resource Manager are used to schedule meetings on the MCU. There are also built-in meeting types that are not retrieved from the MCU in Resource Manager.
Accessing Meeting Types
After configuring MCUs in Admin > Resource Management > MCU, you define meeting types in Resource Manager via Admin > Meeting Types. The Meeting Types section includes the following tabs:
•Active Meeting Types—From the Active Meeting Type tab, you can upload, download, and deactivate meeting types. Active Meeting Types are used for meeting scheduling.
•Inactive Meeting Types—An active meeting type must be deactivated before it can be permanently removed from the system. Once a meeting type is inactive, it can no longer be used for meeting scheduling; however, you must wait until all current or future meetings that use this meeting type are in the past, or you must cancel them. When there are no longer any scheduled meetings that required this meeting type, the meeting type is marked not in use and is removed.
•The Meeting Type window includes information about the following attributes of a listed meeting type:
–Name—The name of a meeting type defined in Resource Manager. You can search for meeting types by Meeting Type name.
Note If the name of a meeting type appears red, the meeting type does not belong to any MCU and cannot currently be used for meeting scheduling.
•Prefix—Service prefix downloaded from the MCU.
•Description—Service description downloaded from the MCU.
•Media—Service media type downloaded from the MCU.
•Max bandwidth (Kbps): Maximum service bandwidth (in kilobytes per second) for download from MCU.
•Lecture Mode—For MCU service that supports exactly two views with the first view being single sub-frame and the second view being multiple sub-frames, you can set this service to support lecture mode feature in which a meeting participant is set to one view and can be seen by all other participants, and the other participants are set to the other view and can be seen by the first participant.
Note MCU services must satisfy certain criteria for the Lecture Mode field to be enabled.
•In Use—Indicates whether or not there are currently or upcoming meetings in Resource Manager that use a meeting type. If so, the meeting type is considered in use and cannot be deleted form the system until the meeting type is no longer in use.
•MCUs—Displays all MCUs defined in Cisco Unified Videoconferencing Manager which have defined meeting types. This means that if an end user schedules a meeting with this meeting type, any MCU that has this meeting type can be selected to host the meeting.
Built-in Meeting Types
•The following are the built-in meeting types available for a non-MCU conference in Resource Manager:
Note Built-in meeting types cannot be modified, uploaded, downloaded, or removed.
–Non Video Conference—This is a conference that involves only users and meeting rooms. There is no need for video conference devices. Use this meeting type to reserve users and room resources only.
–Point to Point—This is a conference that involves only two endpoints (terminals) and no MCU resources. It can only be created if one endpoint dials another endpoint directly. For details, see information about Endpoint Initiated Point to Point Conferences in the Cisco Unified Videoconferencing Manager User Guide.
–Continuous Presence—Create a conference on an endpoint with an embedded MCU with four sub-frames.
–Voice Activated—Create a conference on an endpoint with an embedded MCU with a single sub-frame.
Deploying Meeting Types
In order to schedule MCU conferences, Resource Manager needs to retrieve services from some MCUs, and then redistributes them to other MCUs. In case there are service conflicts (such as two services with the same service prefix from two different MCUs that have different attributes), Resource Manager provides a mechanism to resolve the differences.
The following procedures outlines a workflow for meeting type deployment:
Procedure
Step 1 Download an MCU service.
–Click Download to download an MCU service.
MCU services are downloaded from all MCUs using SNMP.
Step 2 Resolve conflicts.
–When downloading MCU services, it is possible that two services from two different MCUs in the system have the same service prefix (for example, both services prefixes might be 80, the default audio service).
–On the Active Meeting Types tab, choose which service to retain in Resource Manager.
–Select one copy of the MCU services that you want to keep. Resource Manager downloads the specified copy of MCU service and then pushes that copy in order to overwrite all other MUC services that use the same prefix on other MCUs.
–This process enables Resource Manager to ensure that all services with the same service prefix are identical on different MCUs in the system.
This process does not a push a service to MCUs that do not have the service prefix defined. It only pushes the service to MCUs with the same service prefix.
If the service downloaded from the MCUs conflict with a service that already exists in Resource Manager, then the service stored in Resource Manager is selected by default during conflict resolution.
Since Resource Manager supports both MCU version 5 and version 4, if you download a service from a version 5 MCU that has the same service prefix as another service from a version 4 MCU, then Resource Manager tries to resolve the differences between the version 5 MCU service and the version 4 MCU service. The two services have fundamental differences due to the version change. Resource Manager batches the differences to allow the same MCU service to exist on both an MCU version 5 and on an MCU version 4.
If a particular service exists only on a particular MCU, and that MCU is deleted from the system, then that service can no longer be used for meeting scheduling and is an orphaned service. The record of an orphaned service is displayed in red.
Step 3 Upload a service.
When using Resource Manager, it is recommended that all MCUs defined in the system are identical, with exactly the same service definition, so that they can be treated as a pool of interchangeable resources.
–On the Active Meeting Types tab, upload multiple services stored in Resource Manager to one or many MCUs defined in the system in order to make sure that all MCUs have the same service definition.
–Select a number of services on the Active Meeting Types tab, and then click Upload to upload the services. In the Upload Meeting Types window that opens, choose from the list of MCUs that you want to upload the services to, and then click OK to upload.
Note Since MCU service download and upload are done via SNMP, the process may take some time if there are many MCUs to which to connect.
Step 4 Deactive meeting types.
–On the Active Meeting Types tab, choose a number of Meeting Types for deactivation on the Active Meeting Types tab, and then click Deactivate.
The chosen meeting types appear on the Inactive Meeting Types tab. Some of these meeting types may also appear as In Use. Only meeting types not in use can be permanently deleted.
Scheduling a Meeting with a Meeting Type
Meeting types listed on the Active Meeting Types tab are automatically listed in the Meeting Type field in User > Meeting Scheduling > Meeting. To limit which meeting types are accessible by users, customize the available meeting types in Admin > Advanced Settings > Default User Settings. Additionally, you can configure which user can use which meeting type for scheduling in the profile of the user via Admin > User Management > User Profile.
