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Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition

richardfinnie
Level 1
Level 1

Hi All,

I am looking at deploying Cisco voice at several sites, and need some guidance when it comes to the UCMBE product. We want to deploy two UCMBE servers HA, and I wanted to know if these products could be clustered or configured in some A/A or A/S configuration? Any help would be appreciated.

Additionally, for some of the remote sites we will be deploying a local UCME router and I wanted to know if we could centralize the messaging or if I was better off keeping it all distributed.

Thanks all. 

3 Replies 3

William Bell
VIP Alumni
VIP Alumni

Hello,

CUCM-BE does not support clustering or HA.  You would need to run CUCM for this.  Also, if you went the route of loading CUCM instead of CUCM-BE and still wanted Unity Connection voicemail messaging, you would need a CUC server.  So, three servers.  If you wanted CUC clustering then four.

I believe the CUCME can integrate with CUC (standalone or CUCM-BE) though I have not done that myself.

HTH.

Regards,
Bill

HTH -Bill (b) http://ucguerrilla.com (t) @ucguerrilla

Please remember to rate helpful responses and identify

Thanks for the info. It just seems like overkill to deploy CUCM for a total of maybe 600 distributed users. So in your scenerio would it make more sense to do the following?

Deploy 2 CUCM servers (clustered)

Deploy 2 CUC servers (clustered)

Deploy SRST routers at all the remote sites

Centralize all call processing to the above CUCM and CUC servers

I just hate that the BE limitation is 500 users. We have just over that, and cost wise it is a big jump to go to the above scenerio.

Personally, I don't typically recommend or deploy CUCM-BE.  I don't have a problem with the product it just isn't something that finds its way into the projects I work on.

From my point of view you have to determine first if you want (and are able to support) a centralized call processing model during normal operations.  Basically, going back to fundamentals.  Do you have the bandwidth?  Does all of your equipment support QoS?  If using carrier services like MPLS, do you have QoS built into the SLA?  If so, what are the details?  If using TLS or similar Q-in-Q technology, do have QoS "protected" circuits?  Etc.

Also, what is your solution for connectivity to the PSTN?  POTS lines at remote sites, PRI, combo?

Finally, what features did you need to provide to users during normal operations?  During failure scenarios?  Do any of these features involve some backend service (e.g. AD for DirSync, Exchange for calendaring or some other feature, presence, etc. etc.)

There are many questions to resolve before you make a design decision like the one we are discussing.  Given size and budget.  You are probably looking at a dual server CUCM cluster, a single server CUC, and SRST (if you are doing a centralized call processing model). This is just a straw man, there is more to it for sure.

If you go with a distributed model of CUCM-BE with CUCME in the WAN then this is viable and I have read about several folks going this route successfully.  This just isn't the type of deployment I typically get engaged on and would defer to other netpros to provide feedback/recommendations along those lines.

HTH.


Regards,
Bill

HTH -Bill (b) http://ucguerrilla.com (t) @ucguerrilla

Please remember to rate helpful responses and identify

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