Prerequisites
Before you plan Service Fulfillment for your Cisco HCS installation, make sure that you:
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Before you plan Service Fulfillment for your Cisco HCS installation, make sure that you:
Default Deployment
Node 1: SDR + Core HCM-F applications
Node 1: SDR + Core HCM-F applications (App Node)
Service Inventory is a Cisco HCM-F service that queries Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager daily. It reports detailed configurations of customers, subscribers, and devices for all Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unity Connection application instances. The Service Inventory report also provides a summary of all customers, UC clusters, users, and end devices deployed within HCS.
Note |
Service Inventory pulls customer information from the Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager, and generates a report file (or files) for all the customers. |
Complete the following steps when planning service inventory:
Step 1 |
Plan to deploy an SFTP server (and an optional backup SFTP server) with adequate capacity to receive Service Inventory report files. A typical compressed file size would be 8-10 MB for 200,000 users. |
Step 2 |
Decide whether the files will be pushed, or pulled, scheduled, or automatic. |
Step 3 |
Decide which application can be used to parse the detailed inventory data into a form that can be used by your business system. |
Platform Manager is a Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment service that allows you to schedule and monitor the automated installation, upgrade, restart, and backup of multiple application instances across customers for the following applications:
Cisco Unified Communications Manager
Cisco Unity Connection
Cisco Unified Presence / Cisco Unified IM and Presence
Take the following actions for Platform Manager planning as you onboard each customer or cluster:
Determine the number of server groups needed.
Select server groups for backup tasks that avoid overloading blade hardware or I/O bandwidth to data storage LUNs.
Put all servers (for example, Publishers) on a specific ESXi-Host or blade into a common server group. This way the backup of the servers on the host is done serially, minimizing the backup CPU load on the host.
Spread the SFTP servers that are assigned to backup groups across different storage LUNs so that backup transfer load is spread out.
Ensure that no more than two applications are backed up on a specific blade at any one time.
For details on Platform Manager, see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment Install and Configure Guide, Release 12.5.
The following list describes the current limitations for Platform Manager.
Platform Manager is not a diagnostic tool. An error message does appear on the task list page if a task fails; however, you should use your usual set of tools and procedures to diagnose and correct the problem.
The SOAP services do not replace the existing OS Administration and CLI upgrade processes.
Platform Manager offers a wide range of different user-defined servers types to accommodate the management of potentially thousands of servers. You can tag servers with one or more roles such as publisher, subscriber, TFTP, music on hold, secondary TFTP, secondary music on hold to help classify the different servers in your system. You can then tag your servers with one or more server roles for easier identification. Server roles allow you to classify each server in your Platform Manager, making your task creation and viewing more efficient.
Server roles include:
Call Processing
Backup Call Processing
Music on Hold
TFTP
Backup TFTP
Primary Presence
Secondary Presence
Primary Voicemail
Secondary Voicemail
Note |
Server roles are labels to help users identify a server. Setting a server role does not activate any services. Mislabeling a server does not cause any service outages. |
Server groups allow you to logically join together different servers that you want to perform tasks on as a group. You have the flexibility to group servers to accommodate the varied requests for installation, backup, upgrades and restart tasks.
Note |
A task is applied to all servers under the same server group. If you do not want to lose a service, do not put your Active Call Control server in the same server group as its backup when you run a switch version or reboot task. |
Server groups allow you to logically combine various servers; for example, you can create server groups for the following areas:
Server Group by Role - Create call processing server groups and a backup processing server group.
Server Group by Product - Create product A and product B groups.
Server Group by Customer and Product - Create customer A-product A and customer A-product B groups.
Note |
You can have as many servers as you like in a group; however, all servers must be of the same product type. A server can be a member of more than one group. |
The following limitations apply when you create server groups:
You cannot have multiple products in the same server group. For example, if you have a customer that has Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Communications Manager IM and Presence Service, you must create two groups for this customer.
You cannot have publisher servers in the same group as subscriber servers if you want to run upgrade or switch version tasks on the group. For example, if you want to upgrade all of a customer’s services, you must create at least two groups: a publisher server group and at least one subscriber server group to execute the task on the publisher servers before the subscriber servers. This does not apply to restart server tasks. Publishers and subscribers can be in the same group if that group is used for restart server task.
Tasks are the main function of Platform Manager. For example, you may want your publisher servers to back up your subscriber servers within a certain application group. The create tasks pages can help you with this.
The Backup Schedule task feature provides a central location to schedule and monitor backups while reusing of the existing backup infrastructure-the Disaster Recovery System. This feature also enables backup load balancing.
Platform Manager has a powerful filtering capabilities to allow you to view specific information. The following pages have filter options available:
Servers
Server Groups
Task List
Field |
Description |
---|---|
Quick Filter |
View the data by any column on the page. For example, if you want to only see a specific customer servers, you can filter on a customer name. If you want to see all of your Unified Communications Manager servers, you can filter on product and only your Unified Communications Manager servers appear. |
Advanced Filter |
View data by multiple columns and multiple terms in the same column. For example, perhaps you want to see all the Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Presence server groups for customer A and customer B. Add all of the details in the search boxes and your results appear. |
Set Default Filter |
Set a default view for your content. For example, you may want the Quick Filter screen to be the default view on the servers page to it does not have to load all of servers every time to you go the page. |
The following are recommendations for configuring your systems as suggested by Cisco development and testing teams.
Use the SDR Synchronization, the Server Import functionality, or the VCenter Sync operation to populate the servers in your system if possible.
You can perform the VCenter Sync operation through a manual sync request from the Administration menu, or by enabling vCenter Sync from the Data Center Management menu.
Note |
Ensure that the cluster applications are associated with the correct VMs in the Cluster Applications page of Application Management menu. For more information, see the Configure HCMF section in Cisco Hosted Collaboration Mediation Fulfillment Install and Configure Guide . |
Create groups with multiple servers that you perform similar tasks on.
When you name groups, keep the terminology simple and use easy-to-recognize names.
Use the sequencing feature in a task when you want a second group of servers to wait until the first group is done before performing that task.
Use the Backup Schedule task for a more efficient and powerful way to run backups. It helps to control multiple servers that are backed up at the same time and enables load balancing. SFTP servers for DRS backup are configured in Disaster Recovery System (DRS). All the first nodes that use the same SFTP server should be assigned to the same server group for backup, or should be scheduled for backups on different days of the week.
For more information, refer to the HCS Maintain and Operate Guide at http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/unified-communications/hosted-collaboration-solution-hcs/tsd-products-support-series-home.html.
Cisco Prime Collaboration Deployment helps you to manage Unified Communications (UC) applications. Its functions are to:
Migrate a cluster of UC servers to a new cluster (such as MCS to virtual, or virtual to virtual).
Tip |
Cisco Prime Collaboration Deployment does not delete the source cluster VMs after migration is complete. You can fail over to the source VMs if there is a problem with the new VMs. When you are satisfied with the migration, you can manually delete the source VMs. |
Perform operations on clusters, such as:
Upgrade
Switch version
Restart
Fresh install a new release UC cluster
Change IP addresses or hostnames in clusters (for a network migration).
Cisco Prime Collaboration Deployment supports simple migration and network migration. Changing IP addresses or hostnames is not required for a simple migration. For more information, see the Prime Collaboration Deployment Guide.
The functions that are supported by the Cisco Prime Collaboration Deployment can be found in the Prime Collaboration Deployment Administration Guide.
Use the Cluster Discovery feature to find application clusters on which to perform fresh installs, migration, and upgrade functions. Perform this discovery on a blade-by-blade basis.
For more information about features, installation, configuration and administration, best practices, and troubleshooting, see the following documents:
See the Service Fulfillment compatibility table in the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Compatibility Matrix.
Service Providers (SPs) can use Usage-based billing, using call detail records (CDRs) or Call Manager Management Records (CMRs) for the enterprise.
If a service provider is interested in usage type billing, they can direct CDRs from Unified Communications Manager to their billing system. If Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance is configured as a management application, the Cisco HCS CAA CUCM Service configures any CUCM (release 9.0(1) or higher) to send CDRs to Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. The option also exists to work with our third-party vendor to consume CDRs and CMRs to produce necessary billing information or invoices.
Note |
Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance uses CDR and CMR for diagnostic purpose only (not for billing). |
The Cisco TelePresence Exchange System collects and displays call detail records (CDRs) for calls that are placed on the system. From the administration console, you can view CDR details for the system and export a comma-separated value (.csv) file of that information.
The Cisco TelePresence Exchange System retains CDRs for up to 30 days from the recorded end time of the CDR. The system automatically purges CDRs that exceed this 30-day limit. If the total number of CDRs retained by the system reaches 100,000, the system retains only the most recent 100,000 records and automatically purges the rest.
The Cisco TelePresence Exchange System also provides an Application Programming Interface (API) for managing and retrieving call records. For more details, see the API User Guide for the Cisco TelePresence Exchange System.
If you intend to integrate LDAP users into Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager, you need to identify the LDAP servers that will be used. LDAP servers can be integrated at the provider, reseller, customer, or site level in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager. The User Distinguished Name and Base Distinguished Name for LDAP search must be identified for LDAP servers being integrated.
If you intend to deploy Single Sign On (SSO) in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager, you need to identify the Identity Provider (IdP) servers that will be used. IdPs can be located at the provider, reseller, or customer levels in Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager. You will need to be able to upload Service Provider metadata to the IdP and also download IdP metadata.
Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager is an integral part of the service fulfillment subsystem. It is primarily responsible for the configuration and registration of users, subscribers, and endpoints with the back-end Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity Connection, and IM and Presence Service servers. Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager provides the day-to-day service and device provisioning and management tools. One instance supports all deployment sizes up to 200,000 subscribers.
Consider the steps in the following procedure for Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager planning:
Step 1 |
Determine if Webex and Contact Center will be integrated. |
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Step 2 |
Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager is deployed either as a single node, or a cluster of multiple nodes with High Availability (HA) and/or Disaster Recovery (DR) qualities. Each node can be assigned one or more of the following functional roles:
The following combined roles are defined:
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Step 3 |
Determine which dial plan to use. See Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution End-to-End Planning Guide. |
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Step 4 |
For user activations, decide if you will use automated system activations based on system inventory or the Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager admin interface. |
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Step 5 |
Decide if you want to use the Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager user self service portal. If yes, you should allow access for customers or end-users. |
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Step 6 |
Check to see what the static deployment requirements are on Cisco Unified Communications Manager clusters before managing a cluster from Cisco Unified Communications Domain Manager. Gather the following information:
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Step 7 |
Determine if additional languages are required for the system other than English. |
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Step 8 |
Determine if custom branding is desired. |
The following table lists the resource requirements for the listed service fulfillment components.
HCS 11.5(x)/12.5(x) | |||||
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Fulfillment component | vCPU | RAM (GB) | Storage | IOPS | OS |
Unified CDM Multi-node | 4 vCPU @ 2 GHz | 8 GB | 370 GB partitioned as follows:
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300 | |
WebProxy Nodes | 2 vCPU @ 2 GHz | 4 GB |
150 GB |
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HCM-F | 4 x 1.8 GHz | 16 (Res) | 80 | 200 | |
PLM | 1 vCPU x 1.8 GHz | 4 | 50 | - | |
CCDM | 8 | 32 | 100 | 775 (DB server)
565 (web server) |
Microsoft Windows |
The Database storage partition is sized at the initial installation to support the maximum deployment size for the release. Further increase in the size of the partition is not required as new customers are on-boarded.
To set up the disk requirements, the disk has to be set up on the VMWare GUI Resources tab where a disk can be created. This task can be done after the OVA import but prior to the system boots.