Table Of Contents
Overview
Understanding the Cisco Unified Application Environment
Supported Application Development IP Telephony Functions
Supported Application Development and Deployment Technologies
Cisco Unified Application Environment Components
Cisco Unified Application Server
Cisco Unified Media Engine
Cisco Unified Application Designer
Cisco Unified Application Environment Management Console
Understanding the Deployment of the Cisco Unified Application Environment
Single Application Server with a Single Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cluster
Single Application Server with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
Single Application Server Controlling Multiple Media Engines with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
Multiple Application Servers Controlling Multiple Media Engines with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
Overview
The Cisco Unified Application Environment is a development and runtime platform designed for creating, deploying, and executing converged voice and data applications. It is integrated with Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Presence.
This chapter includes these topics:
•
Understanding the Cisco Unified Application Environment
•Understanding the Deployment of the Cisco Unified Application Environment
Understanding the Cisco Unified Application Environment
This section includes these topics:
•Supported Application Development IP Telephony Functions
•Supported Application Development and Deployment Technologies
•Cisco Unified Application Environment Components
Supported Application Development IP Telephony Functions
The Cisco Unified Application Environment can be used to create applications supporting the following IP telephony functions:
•Presence
•Mobility
•Recording
•Paging
•Conferencing
•Speech-enabled applications
•IP phone services
•Other voice and data converged applications
Supported Application Development and Deployment Technologies
It supports these application development and deployment technologies:
•Telephony call control: Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), H.323, Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP), and Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
•Java Telephony Application Programming Interface (JTAPI)
•Other telephony protocols: Cisco Unified IP Phone Services, DeviceListX, AXL-SOAP, Extension Mobility, and other Cisco Unified Communications Manager APIs
•Data services and protocols: Web Services, HTTP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Structured Query Language (SQL), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
•Media processing capabilities: Integrated voice response (IVR), conferencing, transcoding, text-to-speech, speech recognition, speaker verification
•Extensible plug-in framework that customers and partners can use to add support for any standards-based or proprietary protocol or interface
Cisco Unified Application Environment Components
The Cisco Unified Application Environment is made up of these components:
•Cisco Unified Application Server
•Cisco Unified Media Engine
•Cisco Unified Application Designer
Cisco Unified Application Server
The Cisco Unified Application server is administered by the Cisco Unified Application Environment Management Console, is supported on the Cisco Media Convergence servers (MCS) (Table 1-1), and provides these functions:
•Originates and receives calls over various IP telephony protocols.
•Provides application management.
•Starts, executes, manages, and terminates application scripts that are operating in their own runtime environment.
•Hosts protocol providers that provide an interface to applications for systems outside the application environment.
•Controls Cisco Unified Media Engines to process, mix, analyze, and route digital audio data.
Note To serve as an application and runtime platform, each Cisco Unified Application Environment deployment must contain at least one Cisco Unified Application Server with at least one application installed on the server.
Table 1-1 Supported Hardware for the Cisco Unified Application Server and the Cisco Unified Media Engine
Cisco MCS Server Family
|
Cisco Unified Communications Manager Appliance 1
|
CPU
|
RAM
|
7845
|
MCS-7845-H1
|
2x Intel Xeon Processor (3.4GHz)
|
4GB DDR2
|
MCS-7845-I1
|
MCS-7845-H2
|
2x Intel Xeon 5140 Processor
(Dual core 2.33GHz)
|
MCS-7845-I2
|
7835
|
MCS-7835-I1
|
Intel Xeon (3.4GHz)
|
2GB DDR2
|
MCS-7835-H2
|
2x Intel Xeon 5140 Processor
(Dual core 2.33GHz)
|
MCS-7835-I2
|
Intel Xeon 5140 Processor
(Dual core 2.33GHz)
|
7825
|
MCS-7825-H2
|
Intel P4
(3.4 GHz)
|
MCS-7825-I2
|
Intel P4 Pentium D Processor
(3.4 GHz)
|
7816
|
MCS 7816-I3
|
Intel Celeron D 352
(3.2GHz)
|
Applications developed using the Cisco Unified Application Designer (see Cisco Unified Application Designer) can be installed and configured on the Cisco Unified Application Server. An application includes configuration items that are unique to your deployment and which you must configure after the application is installed.
Cisco Unified Media Engine
The Cisco Unified Media Engine is administered by the Cisco Unified Application Environment Management Console, and is a software-only server which provides media processing capabilities for applications that are developed using the Cisco Unified Application Designer. It runs on the Cisco Media Convergence servers (MCS) (Table 1-1), and provides these functions:
Note If the applications do not have any media components, a Cisco Unified Media Engine is not required.
The Cisco Unified Application Environment enables you to:
•Perform flexible deployment of Cisco Unified Application Servers and Cisco Unified Media Engines, by determining the appropriate number and configuration of servers at the time of deployment.
•Avoid latency and bandwidth issues, by allowing you to distribute media engines closer to the media endpoints used for a particular application, as media engines may generate considerable Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) traffic.
Note Each Cisco Unified Media Engine is controlled by one or more Cisco Unified Application Servers.
Cisco Unified Application Designer
The Cisco Unified Application Designer is a PC-based client application which runs on Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003. It is a visual Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which allows application designers to:
•Develop applications that combine voice with enterprise applications and data.
•Install applications directly from the PC or build an application package file.
•Load application package files developed with the Cisco Unified Application Designer through the management console.
For information on the Cisco Unified Application Designer, see
http://www.cisco.com/web/developer/cuae/index.html
Cisco Unified Application Environment Management Console
The Cisco Unified Application Environment management console is a web-based interface that you must use to administer the Cisco Unified Application Server and Cisco Unified Media Engine.
The following browsers are supported:
•Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 6.0 and 7.0
•Mozilla Firefox
The Main Control Panel, which is the home page of the management console, is divided into sections that correspond to the specific management functions that are required to set up the Cisco Unified Application Environment:
•Local Environment—Configuring Local Environment Parameters
•System—Configuring System Parameters
•Components—Configuring Components
•Logs—Viewing Log Information
Understanding the Deployment of the Cisco Unified Application Environment
The Cisco Unified Application Environment supports a variety of deployment topologies that incorporate Cisco Unified Application Servers and Cisco Unified Media Engines, and integrate them with one or more Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters.
The deployment topology strategy should be based on scalability, redundancy, and networking requirements. This section describes these common topologies:
•Single Application Server with a Single Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cluster
•Single Application Server with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
•Single Application Server Controlling Multiple Media Engines with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
•Multiple Application Servers Controlling Multiple Media Engines with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
Single Application Server with a Single Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cluster
In this topology, a single physical server operates as an application server or combined application server and media engine, and is integrated with a single Cisco Unified Communications Manager cluster (Figure 1-1). This configuration is appropriate when the following conditions apply:
•The Cisco Unified Application Environment must support a single Cisco Unified Communications Manager cluster.
•Fewer than 240 simultaneous media streams are required, and the projected amount of media stream traffic between IP endpoints (IP phones, H.323/MGCP gateways, Music on Hold (MOH) servers, and hardware and software conference bridges) and the media engine is not expected to add excessive network load.
Note This is applicable only on high-capacity MCS servers, and is an approximation. If multiple applications involve heavy conferencing, recording and playing, low bit-rate codecs, or CPU-intensive activity, fewer simultaneous media streams are supported.
Note Network traffic loads are impacted only with applications that require media.
•Redundancy is not required for the application server or media engine.
Figure 1-1 Single Application Server, Single Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cluster
Single Application Server with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
In this topology, a single physical server operates as an application server or combined application server and media engine and is integrated with multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters (Figure 1-2). This configuration is appropriate when these conditions apply:
•The Cisco Unified Application Environment must support multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters.
•Fewer than 240 simultaneous media streams are required and the projected amount of media stream traffic between IP endpoints (IP phones, H.323/MGCP gateways, Music on Hold (MOH) servers, and hardware and software conference bridges) and the media engine is not expected to add excessive network load.
Note This is applicable only on high-capacity MCS servers, and is an approximation. If multiple applications involve heavy conferencing, recording and playing, low bit-rate codecs, or CPU-intensive activity, fewer simultaneous media streams are supported.
Note Network traffic loads are impacted only with applications that require media.
•Redundancy is not required for the application server. Either redundancy or over 240 streams of media is required for the media engine.
Figure 1-2 Single Application Server, Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
Single Application Server Controlling Multiple Media Engines with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
In this topology, a single application server controls multiple media engines and is integrated with multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters (Figure 1-3).
Note To avoid latency and bandwidth issues, it is recommended that you distribute media engines close to the media endpoints used for a particular application.
This configuration is appropriate when these conditions apply:
•The Cisco Unified Application Environment must support multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters.
•More than 240 simultaneous media streams are required and the projected amount of media stream traffic between IP endpoints (IP phones, H.323/MGCP gateways, Music on Hold (MOH) servers, and hardware and software conference bridges) and the media engine could potentially add excessive network load across WAN links.
Note This is applicable only on high-capacity MCS servers, and is an approximation. If multiple applications involve heavy conferencing, recording and playing, low bit-rate codecs, or CPU-intensive activity, fewer simultaneous media streams are supported.
Note Network traffic loads are impacted only with applications that require media.
•Either redundancy or application processing beyond the capabilities of one application server is needed for the application server.
•Either redundancy or over 240 streams of media is required for the media engine.
Figure 1-3 Single Application Server, Multiple Media Engines, Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
Multiple Application Servers Controlling Multiple Media Engines with Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
In this topology, multiple application servers control multiple media engines and are integrated with multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters (Figure 1-4). This configuration is appropriate when these conditions apply:
•The Cisco Unified Application Environment must support multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters.
•More than 240 simultaneous media streams are required, or the projected amount of media stream traffic between IP endpoints is expected to add significant network load.
Note This is applicable only on high-capacity MCS servers, and is an approximation. If multiple applications involve heavy conferencing, recording and playing, low bit-rate codecs, or CPU-intensive activity, fewer simultaneous media streams are supported.
Note Network traffic loads are impacted only with applications that require media.
•Redundancy is required for the application server and media engine.
Figure 1-4 Multiple Application Servers, Multiple Media Engines, Multiple Cisco Unified Communications Manager Clusters
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