General System Requirements
Cisco Webex Meetings Server (CWMS) is compatible with Cisco UCS servers that meet or exceed the specifications presented in this section.
![]() Important |
When you perform an upgrade to a major release of CWMS, such as to Release 2.0 or Release 2.5 from Release 1.x, the ESXi hosts (Cisco UCS server) where the Admin virtual machine is located require a minimum of 1.5-TB of free disk space. Refer to the section in this document that describes the different size user systems that begin with the 50-user System. During an upgrade, there are two sets of virtual machines on your network at the same time; the original virtual machines running Release 1.x and the upgrade virtual machines to support the new release. For more details, see the "Upgrading the System" section in the CWMS Administration Guide at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12732/prod_installation_guides_list.html. |
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Requirements Notes |
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Host server and processors |
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Network interfaces The NICs between the ESXi hosts (for the Cisco Webex Meetings Server virtual machines) and the Ethernet switch (not to the external network interface). |
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1Internal (DAS) Storage for ESXi hosts where internal virtual machines are deployed |
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Internal (DAS) storage for ESXi hosts where IRP virtual machines are deployed |
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SAN storage |
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Hypervisor |
ESXi versions and vSphere licenses are described in the Minimum Hardware Requirements section. VMware Vsphere is required and the only product supported; other hypervisor products are not supported. One VMware license per processor socket. For more information about vSphere licenses, see Minimum Hardware Requirements. VMware vCenter Server or vCenter Server appliance versions: 5.0, 5.0 Update 1, 5.0 Update 2, 5.1, 5.1 Update 1, 5.5. (For security reasons, 5.1 must be version 1900470 or later.) Coresidency:
Advanced VMware vSphere features such as Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), Cloning, Fault Tolerance (FT), and vMotion or Storage vMotion are not supported. |
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Email server |
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Licenses |
MDC licenses—An MDC license is required for each data center in a multi-data center system. A MDC license is not required for a system with a single data center. Host license—Each user that shall host a meeting must have a Host license to start a Webex Web, Webex Audio, Blast Dial meeting, or Personal Conferencing. For more information about Host licenses, see About Host Licenses. |
Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Best Practices
The following is a list of best practices that you should refer to when configuring and maintaining your Cisco WebEx Meetings Server system:
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Power your virtual machine hosts by using an uninterruptible power source (UPS) to minimize power interruptions. Repeated power failures can damage host systems and virtual machines.
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Always put your system into maintenance mode before shutting down a guest operating system.
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For scheduled events and other situations that require a system shutdown, gracefully shut down your virtual machines by shutting down the guest operating system.
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The system is designed to repair itself when necessary and rebooting can interrupt this process. We do not recommend that you reboot your system to fix it. If your system is in an unhealthy state, contact the Cisco TAC. Power off your system only when instructed to do so or during scheduled events such as data center maintenance.
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Configure network redundancy to minimize network failures. Refer to "Adding a High Availability System" in the Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Administration Guide for more information.
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Using snapshots on your virtual machines can impair system performance in ways that affect user experience even when the system is otherwise lightly loaded.
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If your system is having problems, make sure that you check your VMware VCenter environment to determine if conditions in VCenter or the network are causing the problem.
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Configure high availability to increase the probability that your system can continue to operate if a failure occurs.
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If you have a high-availability system and your secondary system fails, you can repair it by removing the existing secondary system (refer to "Removing a High Availability System" in your Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Administration Guide) and adding a new secondary system (refer to "Adding a High Availability System" in your Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Administration Guide). If the primary system on a high-availability system fails, you cannot repair it using this procedure. We recommend that you restore your primary system using the disaster recovery procedure and then add a new secondary system. Until you add a new secondary system your deployment is operating without full redundancy. This procedure helps prevent unplanned outages if any of your secondary virtual machines fails. Refer to "Using the Disaster Recovery Feature" in the Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Administration Guide for more information.
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Since your system only keeps the latest system backup on the NFS and removes previous instances every day, we recommend that you keep several recent backups on other media.
Restriction
Do not manually create files or directories in the NFS share used by Cisco WebEx Meetings Server, as it runs various scripts on NFS files and directories. The NFS storage server must be for the exclusive use of Cisco WebEx Meetings Server.
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Use your dashboard to monitor the health status of the NFS, CPU, and storage. We recommend enabling dashboard alarms for storage and CPU.
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If you plan to use directory integration, refer to the Configuring Directory Integration section in the "Managing Users" chapter of the Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Administration Guide for more information.
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When using Cisco WebEx Meetings Server, the related SIP trunk on CUCM in the CallManager service interface should have the Media Termination Point Required check box unchecked on the Trunk Configuration page. See Configuring a SIP Trunk on a Load Balance Point and Configuring a SIP Trunk for an Application Point for more details.
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If you are running Cisco WebEx Meetings Server Release 2.0 or higher and using B-series blade servers, you are required to use SAN storage to fulfill the hard drive requirements. See General System Requirements for more information about SAN requirements.