The CE1200 ships with pre-installed Expressway software. If you need to in future, you can upgrade the pre-installed software to a later supported version. (If you want to check whether the Cisco Expressway has the latest software installed, go to http://software.cisco.com/download/navigator.html and navigate to the Cisco Expressway.)

The minimum required Expressway software version depends on which revision of the appliance you are using. You can identify this from the serial number, as follows:

Caution

Although the system does not prevent downgrades to an earlier software version, Cisco does not support appliances running earlier versions than those specified in the table. This requirement applies to any UCS C220 M5L-based appliance.

If you upgrade the pre-installed UCS firmware, you must only upgrade to a Cisco UCS Host Upgrade Utility package at Release 4.1(1c) or later. This is due to a known issue with the dual NIC/X710 firmware in some earlier 4.0x Host Upgrade Utility packages, that causes the 1Gb SFP transceiver modules to stop working.

The appliance can support either a Large or a Medium Expressway system.

For appliances which are deployed as Cisco Expressway-Es (but not for Cisco Expressway-Cs) you can optionally change the default system size setting in the Expressway software from a Large system to a Medium system, or the other way round.

If you deploy existing CE500, CE1000, or CE1100 appliances, this section highlights some of the differences in the CE1200:

• The CE1200 is designed for use with the Cisco Expressway Series product range, and does not support the Cisco VCS product. It ships with the release key pre-installed.

• Unlike earlier appliances, the CE1200 is a single, multi-purpose server that can operate as a Cisco Expressway-C or a Cisco Expressway-E. By default it always ships with Expressway-C preinstalled. To deploy the server as an Expressway-E, you configure the Type option as Expressway-E, in the Service Setup Wizard (the wizard runs when you first launch the Expressway web user interface, or you can run it anytime from the Status > Overview page). The Traversal Server option key is no longer used to change to an Cisco Expressway-E.

• The appliance now ships with most option keys installed by default. The only functions which still need option keys to be installed manually are:

  • Desktop System licenses

  • Room System licenses

  • RMS licenses

  • Advanced Security

  • Microsoft interoperability

• The CE1200 can support up to 5000 registrations for Mobile and Remote Access, an increase on the 2500 MRA registrations supported by other physical appliances or VM-based systems.

• From May 2019, the CE1200 no longer ships with power cables and KVM cables supplied as default.

To add a CE1200 appliance to an existing cluster that has CE1100 models in it, configure the Type option to match the other peers (Expressway-E or Expressway-C) through the service setup wizard on the Status > Overview page, before you add the CE1200 to the cluster.