Cisco CallManager Serviceability System Guide, Release 3.3(4)
Introduction

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Cisco CallManager

Serviceability

Remote Serviceability Tools

Reporting Tools

Appendix

Definitions

Where to Find More Information


Introduction


This chapter provides an overview of Cisco CallManager Serviceability, remote serviceability, and Call Detail Record (CDR) Analysis and Reporting and comprises the following topics:

Cisco CallManager

Serviceability

Remote Serviceability Tools

Reporting Tools

Appendix

Definitions

Where to Find More Information

Cisco CallManager

Cisco CallManager provides the software-based, call-processing component of the Cisco IP Telephony Solutions for the Enterprise, part of Cisco AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data).

The Cisco CallManager system extends enterprise telephony features and functions to packet telephony network devices such as IP phones, media processing devices, voice-over-IP (VoIP) gateways, and multimedia applications. Additional data, voice, and video services such as unified messaging, multimedia conferencing, collaborative contact centers, and interactive multimedia response systems interact through Cisco CallManager open telephony application program interface (API).

The Cisco CallManager system includes a suite of integrated voice applications for performing voice conferencing and manual attendant console functions. Because of this suite of voice applications, no need exists for special-purpose, voice-processing hardware.

Supplementary and enhanced services such as hold, transfer, forward, conference, multiple-line appearances, automatic route selection, speed dial, last-number redial, and other features extend to IP phones and gateways. Because Cisco CallManager is a software application, enhancing its capabilities in production environments requires only upgrading software on the server platform.

Distribution of Cisco CallManager and all Cisco IP Phones, gateways, and applications across an IP network provides a distributed, virtual telephony network. This architecture improves system availability and scalability. Call admission control ensures that voice quality of service (QoS) is maintained across a constricted WAN link and automatically diverts calls to alternate public switched telephone network (PSTN) routes when WAN bandwidth is not available.

Cisco CallManager Administration, a web-based interface to the database, provides remote device and system configuration and serviceability. This interface also provides access to HTML-based online help for users and administrators.

Serviceability

Administrators can use the Cisco CallManager Administration service tool to troubleshoot system problems. This web-based tool, Serviceability, provides the following services:

Alarms—Saves Cisco CallManager services alarms and events for troubleshooting and provides alarm message definitions. See "Alarms," for detailed Alarms information.

Trace—Saves Cisco CallManager services trace information to various log files for troubleshooting. Administrators can configure, collect, and analyze trace information. See Chapter 8, "Trace," for detailed Trace information.

Real-Time Monitoring—Monitors real-time behavior of the components in a Cisco CallManager cluster. See Chapter 9, "Real-Time Monitoring," for detailed Real-Time Monitoring information.

Service Activation—Views activation status of Cisco CallManager services. Administrators use Service Activation to activate and deactivate services. See Chapter 5, "Service Activation," for more detailed Service Activation information.

Control Center—Views status of Cisco CallManager services. Administrators use Control Center to start and stop services. See "Control Center," for detailed Control Center information.

Quality Report Tool (QRT)—Provides voice quality and general problem-reporting tool for Cisco IP Phones 7940 and 7960. See Chapter 10, "Quality Report Tool", for detailed QRT information.

Access Serviceability from the Cisco CallManager Administration window by choosing Applications from the menu bar. Installing the Cisco CallManager software automatically installs Serviceability and makes it available.

Remote Serviceability Tools

Cisco Service Engineers (CSE) use the remote serviceability tools to supplement the management and administration of your Cisco CallManager system. Using these tools, CSEs gather system and debug information when remote troubleshooting or diagnostic help is needed.

With customer permission, technical support engineers log on to a Cisco CallManager server and get a desktop or shell that allows them to perform any function that could be done from a local logon session.

Remote serviceability supports numerous applications in the multihost and multiplatform Cisco IP Telephony Solutions environment. The tools can process and report on a vast collection of local or remote Cisco CallManager configuration data and system information.

Cisco CallManager supports the following capabilities for remote serviceability:

Cisco Secure Telnet—Allows CSEs to log on to customer remote site to troubleshoot Cisco CallManager system. See Chapter 15, "Cisco Secure Telnet," for detailed information.

Show Command Line Interface—Allows CSEs to display Cisco CallManager system statistics on customer network. See Chapter 16, "Show Command Line Interface," for detailed information.

Microsoft Windows 2000 Performance Monitoring—Allows administrators to monitor performance of Cisco CallManager on local or remote installations. See Chapter 11, "Microsoft Performance," for detailed information.

CiscoWorks2000 Network Management System—Provides remote network management for a Cisco CallManager cluster. See Chapter 18, "CiscoWorks2000," for information.

Path Analysis Interface—Traces connectivity between two specified points on a network and analyzes both physical and logical paths (Layer 2 and Layer 3) taken by packets flowing between those points. See Chapter 19, "Path Analysis," for detailed information.

System Log Management—Provides a centralized system logging service for Cisco IP Telephony Solutions. See Chapter 20, "System Log Management," for detailed information.

SNMP Instrumentation—Enables administrators to remotely manage network performance, find and solve network problems, and plan for network growth. See Chapter 17, "Simple Network Management Protocol," for detailed information.

Cisco Discovery Protocol Support—Enables discovery of Cisco CallManager servers and management of those servers by CiscoWorks2000. See "Cisco Discovery Protocol Support," for detailed information.

Reporting Tools

The Cisco CallManager Serviceability reporting tool, CDR Analysis and Reporting (CAR), provides the following functions:

Multiple levels of users—Administrators who can generate system reports and configure system parameters, managers who can generate reports for users an departments, and users who can generate individual billing reports.

Generate user reports—Individual bills, department bills, top N by charge, top N by duration, top N by number of calls, CTI port enabled, and Cisco IP Phone services.

Generate system reports—QoS detail, QoS summary, QoS by gateway, QoS by call types, traffic summary, traffic summary with extensions, system overview, and CDR error.

Generate device reports—Gateway detail, gateway summary, gateway utilization, route group utilization, route list utilization, route pattern utilization, conference bridge utilization, and voice-mail utilization.

CDR search—CDR database search to verify the details of a call and to help track the progress and quality of leg of a call.

System configuration—Administrators configure system parameters, report scheduler, database options, and error and event logs.

Report configuration—Administrators configure base rate and duration for calls, factoring options, QoS values, and automatic report generation/alert.

Appendix

The Microsoft Performance counters for phones and gateways have related or overlapping information that is also used by Real-Time Monitoring device monitoring and CCM_SNMP_MIB. The appendix contains tables that describe the related counter information for Microsoft Performance, Real-Time Monitoring, and CCM_SNMP_MIB.

See "Cisco CallManager Perfmon Counters, RTMT, and CISCO-CCM-MIB," for detailed information.

Definitions

Table 1-1 provides the definitions for the terms used throughout this document.

Table 1-1 Serviceability Terms and Definitions 

Term
Definition

Real-Time Monitoring

This term identifies a program in Serviceability that provides real-time information about Cisco CallManager performance counters and devices.

Alarm

Administrators use alarms to obtain run-time status and state of the Cisco CallManager system. Alarms contain information about system problems such as explanation and recommended action.

Alarm Catalog

This term refers to a file containing all the Alarm definitions. Serviceability supports multiple alarm catalogs that are specific to the alarm type.

Alarm Definition

Administrators search the alarm definitions database for alarm information. The alarm definition contains a description of the alarm and a recommended action.

Alarm Event Levels

Administrators determine the level of information that an alarm will contain. Levels range from general information about the system to information for debugging purposes only.

Alarm Filters

Administrators determine the level of information an alarm contains and where the alarm information gets saved.

Alarm Monitors

Cisco CallManager Serviceability allows alarms to be sent to different destinations called monitors: Win2000 Event viewer, SDI trace, SDL trace, SNMP trap, and SysLog.

Alert Notify

Administrators configure alert notifications for performance counters and gateway ports/channels by using the Real-Time Monitoring tool. Real-time monitoring sends alerts to the administrator by e-mail or in a popup window.

Category Tabs

Administrators configure specific monitoring windows in real-time monitoring for troubleshooting purposes. The administrator creates these specific windows by using Category Tabs.

Chart View

The Performance Monitoring Window displays performance counters in chart view by default. Chart view graphically shows the performance of the counter.

Cisco CallManager service

Cisco CallManager supports many services in the form of software that performs a specific function, such as TFTP, CTI, or music on hold.

Control Center

Control Center tool in Serviceability allows administrators to view the status of and to start and stop Cisco CallManager services.

Debug Trace Levels

Administrators determine the level of information that a trace will contain. Levels range from general errors to detailed errors for debugging purposes only.

Device Monitoring

Real-time monitoring displays real-time information about Cisco CallManager devices such as phones and gateways.

Device Monitoring Window

The right side of the Real-Time Monitoring tool window displays device performance information when the tool is monitoring device performance.

Device Name Based Trace Monitoring

Administrators obtain trace information about selected devices by configuring trace parameters for Cisco CallManager and Cisco CTIManager services.

Monitoring Objects Window

The left side of the Real-Time Monitoring tool window displays object counter hierarchy information or device information for a cluster. The information that displays depends on which tab is active in the window.

Object counter

Windows 2000 provides performance data that contains information about various object counters. Counters measure various aspects of system performance. Object counters include registered phones, calls attempted, and calls in progress. The Real-Time Monitoring tool monitors the real-time performance of these counters.

Performance Monitoring

The Real-Time Monitoring tool displays real-time information about a performance counter. Performance counters can be system specific or Cisco CallManager specific.

Performance Monitoring Window

The right side of the Real-Time Monitoring tool window displays counter performance information when the tool is monitoring counter performance.

SDI Trace log file

Every Cisco CallManager service includes a default synchronous device interface (SDI) trace log file. The system traces system diagnostic interface information from the services and logs run-time events and traces to a log file.

SDL Trace log file

This file contains call-processing information from services such as Cisco CallManager and Cisco CTIManager. The system traces the signal distribution layer (SDL) of the call and logs state transitions into a log file.

Service status icons

Control Center displays three icons that represent the status of a service on a server:

Square represents a stopped service.

Arrow represents a service that is running.

Question mark represents a service that is in an unknown state.

Trace

Administrators and Cisco engineers use trace to obtain specific information about Cisco CallManager service problems.

Trace Analysis

This program in Trace allows administrators to debug specific system problems.

Trace log file

Cisco CallManager Serviceability sends configured trace information to this file. Two types of trace log files exist: SDI and SDL.

Window Status Bar

The bottom, right corner of the Real-Time Monitoring tool window displays the window status bar. The status bar displays five icons: Preferences, Cluster Information, Resource Usage, About, and Help.

Quality Report Tool

This term designates voice quality and general problem-reporting utility in Cisco CallManager Serviceability.


Where to Find More Information

Additional Cisco Documentation

Cisco CallManager Serviceability Administration Guide

Troubleshooting Guide for Cisco CallManager

CiscoWorks2000 user documentation

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/rtrmgmt/cw2000/index.htm