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Before you plan the data center for your Cisco HCS installation, make sure that you:
Review and have access to the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Release 14 Solution Reference Network Design Guide.
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The following procedures lists the high-level steps required to determine your data center requirements.
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| Step 1 |
Collect and estimate the type of tenants using detailed information about your system. You should have already done this as part of Complete Tenant Matrix. Gather information about customers, customer average sizes, future growth, security requirements, local versus central break out, regulatory requirements, and access models. |
| Step 2 |
Determine if there are any other services that are offered from the same data center as Cisco HCS. |
| Step 3 |
Determine the locations and the number of data centers that you plan to deploy for Cisco HCS. Locations and number of data centers are determined based on target market proximity requirements, redundancy requirements, size, and access models. All of these factors can affect your costs. For UC applications, for example, you should determine whether all of your customers will have the same redundancy or whether the redundancy is determined on a per-customer basis. |
| Step 4 |
Determine whether you have a single or multiple data center setup. |
| Step 5 |
Choose your site deployment type.
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Using the information collected about the locations, the number of data centers and the capital expenditure determines your deployment model. Deployment models are: Large PoD, Small PoD, or Micro Node. You may have already done this in Determine Your HCS Data Center Deployment Model.
For further information, see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Release 14 Capacity Planning Guide.
| Step 1 |
Examine key attributes to determine the data center deployment model:
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Use the data and capacity requirements to determine the data center deployment model across one or more data centers. |
| Step 1 |
Determine whether the management applications will be NATted into a Customer Domain. |
| Step 2 |
Review the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Compatibility Matrix to determine the required application versions for the current release. For the most recent compatibility information, see the compatibility matrix from the Cisco HCS documentation page http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/ps11363/tsd_products_support_series_home.html |
Build your network infrastructure with consideration of the following networking resources:
Virtual machine templates: Details about these templates and other sizing considerations can be found in the Unified Communications Virtualization Sizing Guidelines.
Service profiles on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) Manager: Decide how many service profiles you want for your system. From a hardware perspective, the best service profile choice is two profiles when you compare upgrade reduction versus hardware required. If hardware is not an issue, four service profiles is the best choice.
Addressing scheme for the UC applications: For more details, refer to IP Addressing for HCS Applications.
Management domain addressing.
NATted address pools in management domain for UC applications: For more details, refer to NAT Planning Considerations.
VLANs: Use the recommended numbering scheme. For more details, refer to Grouping VLANs and VLAN Numbering.
PSTN connectivity: For more details, refer to Identify Trunking Services.
Remote site access: Consider the following options for remote site access:
Site-to-Site VPN
Line Side access or Over-the-Top (OTT) VPN
SBC as a session border controller for SIP trunking
MPLS VPN
AnyConnect
FlexVPN
Plan for Expressway Deployment to allow roaming users to connect remotely.
One VLAN for each customer must be dedicated for each Cisco HCS Enterprise customer. Overlapping addresses for customer UC infrastructure applications of each customer is supported.
The option to select the address pool from which addresses will be assigned for the customer's UC infrastructure applications (Cisco HCS Instance) is also supported. This option is necessary to avoid any conflicts with customer-premises addressing schemes.
 Note |
When deploying Cisco HCS in the hosted environment, you must not have NAT between any end device (phone) and the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UC application) on the line side, because some of the mid-call features may not function properly. However, when Over The Top access is supported (using Expressway, etc.), there can be NAT in front of the endpoint. It is also recommended that the HCS Management applications not be deployed within a NAT. Using NAT between the vCenter Server system and ESXi/ESX hosts is an unsupported configuration. For more details, see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010652 |
For an HCS-LE deployment (single customer only), implementing Network Address Translation (NAT) between your management applications and Unified Communications applications is not required. If you implement NAT in this scenario, the synthetic call feature of Cisco Unified Operations Manager is not available.
Your voice or video endpoints are registered to the Call Controller and configured with the private IP address of the endpoints. You can manage these endpoints in Cisco Prime Collaboration with a public IP address (managed IP address).
Your TelePresense endpoints are provisioned to the Cisco TelePresence Exchange System (CTX). You can manage these endpoints in Cisco Prime Collaboration with a public IP address (managed IP address).
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Cisco Unified Communications Manager cannot be shared and must be configured with the private IP addresses of the endpoints. |
The monitoring of TelePresence endpoint health, video session diagnostics, and medianet are supported with public IP addresses.
Real Time Protocol-based diagnostic tests, such as synthetic tests, are not supported.
Data from phone XML discovery is not available for phones.
The autodiscovery and video test call features are not supported.
Video session statistics and session information are not available for phones even when they are configured for full visibility.
Sensor-based call quality reports are not supported.
Media Path Analysis is not supported.
For more information about features in Prime Collaboration Assurance MSP mode, see the Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance Guide - Advanced: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/prime-collaboration/products-user-guide-list.html.
Cisco recommends that when you design Layer 2 for a Cisco HCS deployment, you group the VLANs based on their usage. The current Service Provider Cisco HCS data center design assumes that each end customer consumes only two VLANs; however, it is possible to configure four VLANs for each end customer.
Use the following VLAN numbering scheme if four VLANs are configured for each end customer:
0100 to 0999: UC Apps (100 to 999 are the customer IDs)
1100 to 1999: outside VLANs (100 to 999 are the customer IDs)
2100 to 2999: hcs-mgmt ( 100 to 999 are the customer IDs)
3100 to 3999: Services ( 100 to 999 are the customer IDs)
Use all the unused VLANs x000 to x099 (where x is 1, 2, or 3) and VLANS 4000 to 4095 for other purposes
Use the following number scheme if only two VLANs are configured for each end customer:
0100 to 1999: UC Apps (100 to 999 are the customer IDs for Group 1)
2100 to 3999: outside VLANs (100 to 999 are the customer IDs for Group 1)
Use the following numbering scheme for additional end customers:
2100 to 2999: UC Apps (100 to 999 are the customer IDs for Group 2)
3100 to 3999: outside (100 to 999 are the customer IDs for Group 2)
Use the unused VLANs for other purposes
While this is the recommended grouping of VLANS to help you scale the number of customers that can be hosted on a Cisco HCS platform, you may reach the upper limit of customers due to limitations in other areas of the Cisco HCS solution.
| Step 1 |
Determine the virtual machine distribution. For more information on recommendations, refer to the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Release 14 Solution Reference Network Design Guide.
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| Step 2 |
Analyze the available bandwidth. Based on the deployment model, estimate:
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| Step 3 |
Determine the MPLS VPN peering arrangement between the Service Provider Cisco HCS Data Center and MPLS provider. |
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Determine whether to use Over-The-Top access or site-to-site VPN for remote access through the Internet. |
For information on determining DMZ requirements for Expressway configuration see Data Center Configuration Overview.
This section provides guidance for configuring Collaboration Edge OTT in the Service Provider Cisco HCS data center. Use this information with, but not as a replacement for, the Cisco Expressway documentation.
Two more VLANs are required to accommodate ASA contexts, global DMZ inside and outside. The customer inside and outside VLANs are also required. Configuration is required in the Nexus 7000, vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) (and in the Nexus 5000, if deployed), UCS Manager, and ASA. The global DMZ inside VLAN (after Firewall) and the customer outside VLAN extend into the DC. These VLANs are used on the virtualized Cisco Expressway-E.
Expressway in OTT DeploymentsExpressway-E hosts the public IP address. The client accesses this address by way of the public Internet. Expressway-E typically sits in the DMZ of the enterprise network. In the HCS DC, Expressway-E runs on UCS behind the ASA. Expressway-C sits in the same IP address space as Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Communication between Expressway-C and Expressway-E is through the ASA, which provides the NAT and firewall functions.
Shared Expressway for Business-to-Business Dialing: Expressway-E hosts the public IP address. The non-HCS businesses access this address by way of the public Internet. Expressway-E typically sits in the DMZ of the shared network, between the common outside and shared inside firewall contexts on ASA, to create a DMZ. The Expressway-E is connected to the Expressway-C through the shared internal firewall context. Communication between Expressway-C and Expressway-E is through the ASA, which provides the NAT and firewall functions. The Expressway-C is peered with the session border controller (as a neighbor). For more information, see the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Solution Reference Network Design Guide.
Consider the following for storage planning.
| Step 1 |
Determine capacity needs. See Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Release 14 Capacity Planning Guide for more information about capacity. |
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| Step 2 |
Determine storage connectivity options such as such as FCOE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet), FC (Fiber Channel) or NAS. Micro Node deployments must use local storage.
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Determine approved storage vendors for UCS with SAN or NAS. See UCS Hardware and Software Interoperability Technical References at http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/servers-unified-computing/unified-computing-system/products-technical-reference-list.html for details on approved storage vendors for UCS with SAN or NAS. |
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| Step 4 |
Determine storage tier, either multi-tier or single tier. Using tiers lets you distribute capacity across multiple tiers. Larger deployments should consider their capacity distribution carefully. |
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| Step 5 |
Consider storage raid array recommendations. For more details, see Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Release 14 Solution Reference Network Design Guide for more details. |
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| Step 6 |
Determine LUN sizing. For more details, see Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution Release 14 Solution Reference Network Design Guide. |
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