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First Published: April 21, 2014
Beginning in Cisco StadiumVision Director Release 3.1, a centralized server site can be deployed with multiple remote sites in a multi-venue architecture. This document is intended for Cisco StadiumVision Director administrators and describes how to enable and manage multiple venue support on Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote servers.
Before you configure Cisco StadiumVision Director remote servers for multiple venue support, be sure that the following requirements are met:
– The names that you want to use for the remote sites.
– The IP addresses for all installed Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote servers.
Note If you do not yet have the IP addresses for the remote server sites, you can continue to add the venues to Cisco StadiumVision Director without any IP address, and go back to configure the real IP addresses later.
– If you plan to override use of global remote server credentials, then you have the password that you want to use for each remote server. This will also require reconfiguration of these credentials using the Text Utility Interface (TUI) on the Cisco StadiumVision Director remote server. For more information, see the Configuring Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote Servers.
Before you configure Cisco StadiumVision Director remote servers for multiple venue support, be sure that you consider the following restrictions:
– Control Panel > Control—Administrator, Event Operator, and Venue Operator
– Control Panel > Content—Administrator and Content Manager
– Control Panel > Schedule—Administrator and Content Manager
– Management Dashboard—Administrator and Venue Operator
Note The following areas of the Control Panel > Setup are not directly venue-aware using the venue selector, but objects defined there can have a venue-specific relationship:
This section includes the following topics:
Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote Servers are installed at remote sites to provide a way of transferring venue-specific content in a distributed Cisco StadiumVision Director network environment, where primary management and control is performed on a centralized Cisco StadiumVision Director server.
The benefits of deploying remote servers include faster script staging due to WAN optimization, as well as multicast optimization which reduces the number of messages that remote DMPs receive.
The Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote servers support a limited set of administrative functions using a text utility interface (TUI) similar to the TUI support on Cisco StadiumVision Director. The remote servers are connected by a wide-area network (WAN) to the central Cisco StadiumVision Director server. The remote server connection to the central Cisco StadiumVision Director server is configured using the IP addresses of the servers. The IP address configuration must be completed on both the Cisco StadiumVision Director server, and on the Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote server using the remote server TUI.
The transmission of data is optimized over the WAN because the central Cisco StadiumVision Director server sends content only to the Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote server, rather than sending multiple transmissions to each remote DMP for that server. The remote server sends that content to each of the DMPs that it is configured to support on the local network.
For more information, see the Cisco StadiumVision Director Server Architecture.
Cisco StadiumVision Director Release 3.1 introduces a new role of Venue Operator and adds new configuration management features to the Administrator role. All other legacy roles in Cisco StadiumVision Director retain their existing functionality.
For more information about user management and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), see the User Management in Cisco StadiumVision Director.
The Cisco StadiumVision Director administrator can perform all functions related to Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote server configuration and venue management.
Most of the configuration management for multiple venue support resides only with the Cisco StadiumVision Director administrator role, which includes the addition of the following functions:
In a multi-venue architecture a Content Manager can perform all of the same functions as within a standard Cisco StadiumVision Director environment, with the addition of the following capabilities:
Note Content Managers can only create new objects with venue assignment based on the currently selected venue in the venue selector. To reassign an object to a different venue, the Content Manager must remove the object and add again.
The Venue Operator is a new role introduced in Cisco StadiumVision Director Release 3.1 that is based on a subset of Event Operator and Help Desk roles, with the added functionality of venue-specific scope of control. The Venue Operator role supports the following capabilities:
Legacy RBAC roles (roles that were available in releases prior to Cisco StadiumVision Director Release 3.1) can perform all of the same functions as within earlier Cisco StadiumVision Director software releases.
Note In a multi-venue architecture an Event Operator can perform all of the same functions as within a standard Cisco StadiumVision Director environment. The Event Operator role is not venue aware. To support venue-specific scope of control for scripts, use the new Venue Operator role.
A centralized Cisco StadiumVision Director site with multiple remote sites (venues) supports the following functionality:
Tip You can use the Bulk Administration Tool (BAT) to associate multiple locations to a venue.
This section provides information about scripts that you should be aware of when implementing them in a multi-venue environment.
When configuring scripts in a multi-venue environment, consider the following best practices:
1. Create the script first without any actions—Name it and save it.
2. Assign the script to the venue.
3. Edit the script to assign it to zones/groups.
4. Use playlists that belong to the same venue.
5. Edit the script to further define states.
Note If you move a script assignment from one venue to another, be aware that the zones/groups/playlists might still be associated with the old venue until they are manually reassigned. If a script is part of one venue and zones/groups/playlists are part of another venue, then the script will not start.
In Cisco StadiumVision Director, script staging is always serialized. In the case of two venues where each is deployed with a different remote server, then when scripts are staged for each venue, one venue’s script will be staged before the other. The sripts will not start at the same time.
In the case of content replacement, content staging happens right away. If current staging is going on, content replacement staging will go into the queue. The DMP will play old content until confirmation of successful staging occurs, so there could be some time delay.
This section includes the following tasks:
By default, Cisco StadiumVision Director is not configured for multi-venue deployment. To support Cisco StadiumVision Director with a centralized server and remote sites, you must configure the Multiple Venue Configuration property, which will set the corresponding registry key. Once this registry key is set, it will be preserved during an upgrade.
To enable multiple venue support in Cisco StadiumVision Director, complete the following tasks:
Step 1 Log into Cisco StadiumVision Director as an administrator.
Step 2 From the main menu, click Management Dashboard .
Step 3 Go to SV Director Configuration > Multiple Venue Configuration .
Step 4 Set the Multiple Venue Enabled? property value to “ true .”
Step 5 Click the Refresh icon to update property values.
The multiple venue management functions are enabled in Cisco StadiumVision Director and the registry key named “ multiVenueDeployment .”
Step 7 Confirm that the “ Choose venue: ” control appears in the upper right corner of the Management Dashboard window.
Step 8 Go to Control Panel > Setup and confirm that the Venues tab is available.
Tip If you already had the Control Panel open before enabling multiple venue support, refresh the browser to display the Venues tab.
After you enable multiple venue support in Cisco StadiumVision Director, you can add remote sites as venues in the Control Panel.
To add venues in Cisco StadiumVision Director, complete the following tasks:
Step 1 Log into Cisco StadiumVision Director as an administrator.
Step 2 From the main menu, click Control Panel .
Step 4 Click the plus ( + ) icon.
The Intro panel displays the remote server configuration options (Figure 1).
Figure 1 New Venue Intro Panel
Step 5 (Required) In the Name box, type a unique and identifiable name for the venue. “new venue” is the default.
Step 6 (Required) In the Time zone box, click the arrow to open the drop-down box and select the time zone for the remote site.
Note This option is informational only and for proof-of-play reporting. The actual time zone for the venue is configured from the TUI on the remote server. For more information, see the “Restrictions for Configuring Multiple Venue Support” section.
Step 7 (Required only when remote servers are deployed) In the IP address box, type the IPv4 address of the Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote server.
Step 8 (Optional) To specify a unique password for the remote server to enable monitoring from the Management Dashboard, type a Password.
Tip When global credentials are configured, this field is automatically populated with the global password that is configured in the Cisco StadiumVision Director Management Dashboard. Before you modify this password, be sure that you understand the use and requirements for this password. For more information, see the “Configuring Connectivity to the Cisco StadiumVision Director Server” section.
You can associate venues with Locations, Playlists, Scripts, and Users in Cisco StadiumVision Director. Only the administrator can perform associations for all of these objects for all venues using the Venues tab in the Control Panel Setup screen.
After the initial multiple venue configuration and association is completed by the Cisco StadiumVision Director administrator, other roles (Content Manager and Venue Operator) can use the venue selector in Cisco StadiumVision Director for their authorized functional areas of the interface to select their venue scope of control. Any related tasks will be based on that selected venue scope (All Venues or a specific venue).
Before you associate venues in Cisco StadiumVision Director, be sure that you understand the following guidelines:
Note SSC users and the SSC portal are not venue aware. There is no venue selector available in SSC.
To associate venues with Cisco StadiumVision Director objects, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Log into Cisco StadiumVision Director as an administrator.
Step 2 From the main menu, click Control Panel .
Step 4 In the Venue list, click the name of the venue that you want to associate.
Step 5 Do the following to assign object types to the selected venue:
a. Click Locations , Playlists , Scripts , or Users .
b. In the “Available” box, select the name of the location, playlist, script, or user that you want to associate.
Tip You can multi-select objects. Click the checkbox and Ctrl+Click to select additional objects. In releases prior to Release 3.1 SP1, multi-selection was limited to Locations objects only.
The object name is added to the Assigned box.
d. Repeat from Step a. or Step b. for as many objects as you need to associate.
Figure 2 Associate Scripts to Venue Example
Step 6 (Optional) To remove an assigned object, select the name of the object in the “Assigned” box and click the >> button.
Step 7 When associations are complete, click Save .
When you attempt to associate objects to venues, certain conditions can cause the system to provide you with a warning about objects that are not optimally configured to be associated to the venue, such as a Location already being associated to a group or zone in another venue. The warning message identifies the objects, which allows you to do one of two things:
Note The Force button might not work for all associations. It is important to understand that an attempt is made by the system to force the specified user action but several factors influence its success. For best results, read the error message and see what objects are identified as being in conflict with the requested action and take corrective steps to avoid the conflict within Cisco StadiumVision Director.
Figure 3 shows an example of an error message that can appear when you attempt to associate venue objects and there are conflicts within the Cisco StadiumVision Director configuration. Any other objects not in conflict will be associated to the venue as requested.
Figure 3 Venue Association Conflict Message Example
Figure 4 shows an example of a venue assignment conflict message where the location, playlist, or script that you tried to assign to a venue is identified as already assigned to another venue. The original venue assignment is displayed in the message (“Cheyenne2” in this example). You can do one of two things:
Figure 4 Confirm Object Reassignment Message Example
To remove a venue from Cisco StadiumVision Director, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Log into Cisco StadiumVision Director as an administrator.
Step 2 From the main menu, click Control Panel .
Step 4 Dissassociate all objects that are linked to the venue that you want to remove.
Step 5 In the Venue List box, select the venue that you want to remove.
Step 6 Click the delete icon (red dash).
You can select venue scope in the Control Panel and in the Management Dashboard. However only certain areas of the Control Panel interface are venue aware. Once you have enabled the software for multiple venue support and added new venues in the Control Panel, you can use the venue selector in those areas that are venue aware.
Venue status is indicated in the venue selector using a radio button that is colored red to indicate that the venue is disabled and green to show that the venue is online.
To select venue scope, complete the following tasks:
Step 1 Log into Cisco StadiumVision Director as an administrator, content manager, or venue operator.
Step 2 Go to the Control Panel (or Management Dashboard, as allowed by your role).
Step 3 At the top of the window, look for the venue selector drop-down box.
Figure 5 shows an example of the venue selector in the Cisco StadiumVision Control Panel.
Figure 5 Venue Selector Drop-Down Box in the Control Panel
Step 4 Do one of the following:
Step 5 Continue to the Control Panel area that you want to configure.
You can monitor the status of remote devices for selected venues from the Management Dashboard.
The red, green, or gray LED to the left of venue names in the venue selector represents the status of the Cisco StadiumVision Director remote server, but not whether the DMPs in the venue are accessible.
You also can see if there are connection issues for the Cisco StadiumVision Director remote server Monitor and Status > Services area of the Management Dashboard.
Traffic monitoring of remote DMPs in the Management Dashboard is performed using unicast messaging, so multicast optimization does not apply nor interfere with the multicast optimization for the Cisco StadiumVision Director Remote server processing.
To monitor venues from the Management Dashboard, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Log into the Cisco StadiumVision Director server as an administrator.
Step 2 Go to the Management Dashboard.
Step 3 At the top of the window, select the venue whose devices you want to monitor.
Step 4 Click Monitor and Status .
Step 5 Select the area that you want to get information about. Go to Services to see the status of the Cisco StadiumVision Director remote server connection.
Figure 6 shows information about zones in the Tokyo venue.
Figure 6 Monitoring Devices for a Specific Venue in the Management Dashboard
This section describes the best practices for migrating a large number of deployed devices and locations from a single venue to a multiple venue system using the Bulk Administration Tool (BAT).
For more information about the tasks referenced here for exporting, editing, and importing TSV files using BAT, see the Cisco StadiumVision Director Bulk Adminstration Tool guide.
This section includes the following tasks:
Before you migrate deployed devices from Cisco StadiumVision Director, be sure that the following requirements are met:
Groups, zones, locations, scripts, suites, and playlists.
For example, to name scripts , playlists , and locations that belong to a venue called “WEST-SIDE-VENUE” you could use the prefex “WE” such as WE-Script1, WE-Script2, WE-Playlist1, WE-Location1, and so on.
For example, if there is a group (ALL-DMPs) that consists of all of the DMPs in Cisco StadiumVision Director, then the group needs to be sub-divided into smaller groups of DMPs by venue, such as “ALL-DMPs-Venue1,” “All-DMPs-Venue2,” “ALL-DMPs-No-Venue” and so on.
This same rule applies to other objects like zones, scripts, suites, and locations. If any of these have objects that are targeted to be in different venues or to be global (that is, objects that are not part of any venues) then they need to be sub-divided on a per-venue basis.
Tip You can easily verify whether or not a controller is defined for a suite by looking at the original exported device list (See “Exporting a Device List for the Original System Configuration” section.) If Column N (Suite Name) has a value and Column M (Suite Control Type) does not have a corresponding value in the same row, then you know that the Suite named in Column N does not have a device list attached to it.
If a suite controller is not attached, then you must assign a suite controller to it. If there are not any available suite controllers, you can create an artificial one and assign it to the suite. These fake controllers can be deleted after the migration process has completed successfully:
1. Go to Control Panel > Setup > Devices > IP Phones .
2. Create artificial IP phone entries with fake, non-pingable IP addresses.
4. Select the suite that does not have a suite controller.
5. Click the Phone & Remote tab on the right panel that has suite properties.
6. Assign the artificial IP phone that you created to the suite by selecting the checkbox.
This task should be done to preserve initial single venue system configuration information and to aid re-population of that information to the new multi-venue device list created later.
For more information, see the “Exporting and Downloading a TSV File for Locations and DMPs” topic in the Cisco StadiumVision Director Bulk Adminstration Tool guide.
To export a device list for the original system configuration, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Go to Control Panel > Setup > Devices > Locations & DMPs .
Step 3 When the Export box displays, click Download .
Step 4 When the “Select location for download” window appears, type the name of the .txt file that you want to save, or accept the default name and click Save .
Step 5 Be sure to save a master copy of the originally exported device list.
This task describes how to create a new venue with basic information, which will be further updated in a later task using BAT.
To create new venues, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Go to Control Panel > Setup > Venues.
Step 2 Specify the Name and Timezone for the venue.
Note Before you remove locations from existing groups, be sure that you have completed the requirements in the Prerequisites section to place all objects in unique groups per venue.
Before associating Locations to the new venues, you need to remove them from existing groups.
To remove all Locations from Groups, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Go to Control Panel > Setup > Zones & Groups > Location<->Group .
Step 3 Select an individual group.
Step 4 In the Locations panel on the right, select all Locations for the selected group.
Tip You can use Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click key sequences to multi-select the Locations.
Step 5 Click Remove From Groups .
Step 6 Repeat from Step 3 for all groups that need locations removed.
Step 7 Refresh the browser to reload the UI so that the changes are updated.
To associate locations to a venue, they need to be removed from any existing suites. These locations will be added back to the configuration using the BAT tool using the original Device list that was exported.
To remove Locations from existing suites, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Go to Control Panel > Setup > Suites .
Step 2 Select any suites that contain locations that are targeted to be moved to venues.
Step 3 Select each location and click the red '-' button on the top to delete it from the suite.
Tip Click the red '-' button rapidly to delete DMPs quickly from the suite.
Step 4 After all DMPs are removed from the suite, be sure to click Save .
Step 5 Repeat from Step 2 for each suite from which you need to remove locations.
To establish the venue-specific fields when you export the new multi-venue device list, you need to associate at least one Location to each new venue that you created.
For more information, see the Associating Venues with Cisco StadiumVision Director Objects.
This task is performed to more easily complete configuration of any remaining venue-specific information and association of locations using BAT.
To complete venue-specific information and association of Locations, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Export a new device list.
After the association of at least one Location per venue, the newly exported device list file now contains the venue-specific field entries that can now be more easily populated with the remaining required configuration information.
The venue-specific field entries in the BAT file are:
Note The Venue JMX Username field is always ignored.
Step 2 To complete association of Locations to venues, edit the TSV file using a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel to:
a. Complete the venue-specific information.
a. Copy (or auto-fill) to add rows for new Locations that you want to add to the venues.
Step 3 Import the device list.
For more information, see the “Importing a TSV File” topic in the Cisco StadiumVision Director Bulk Adminstration Tool guide.
Step 4 Go to Control Panel > Setup > Venues and confirm that the Locations are properly associated to their venues.
This step allows you to more easily re-populate the original system’s Group information to the new multi-venue device list.
To populate Group and other information from the original device list, complete the following steps:
Step 1 Export a new device list and open the file in your spreadsheet application.
Step 2 Excluding the first row, select all rows and columns.
Step 3 Sort the spreadsheet by the Name field (column E).
Step 4 Obtain the copy of the master device list that you exported in in Step 1. Also sort the master spreadsheet by the Name field.
Step 5 From the original master file, copy the columns that have Group information (Z, AA, AB, AC, and so on) and paste them appropriately into your new device list.
Tip When working with certain rows and columns in Microsoft Excel, the hide/unhide columns or rows feature and freeze/unfreeze feature can be used to efficiently do this job. For information about these features, see the Microsoft support site.
Step 6 From the original master file, also copy columns that have Suites and Suite Controller information (J–Y).
Step 7 Save the new device list.
Step 8 Import the new device list into Cisco StadiumVision Director.
Step 9 After the import is complete, refresh the browser.