Unity on UCS C210M1

cchow2006 · ‎06-25-2010

I would like to know if there is official support for Unity (not

Unity Connection) on a UCS C210M1 server. There seems to be conflicting information in Cisco's documentation. Does anybody know if this configuration is supported officially, and what kind of server configuration is needed? Thanks.

David Hailey · ‎06-25-2010

I haven't looked at this specifically but I thought I'd share this info:

Unity's guidelines and support for virtualization is different than that of UC on UCS. Virtualization for Unity was introduced by the BU in version 7x and it has it's own set of rules and hardware support that were developed independently of UC on UCS.

UC on UCS is a new virtualization model that relies on customers using Cisco's specialized UCS platform (B and C Series at the moment).

I know this doesn't completely answer your question but it does give some insight into what may appear to be discrepancies in documentation. I'd start with the Unity virtualization documentation as the first authority for what is supported for that platform.

Hailey

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Scott Hills · ‎06-25-2010

Here is the doc which I have found:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6790/ps5748/ps378/solution_overview_c22-597556.html

Cisco UCS B200 M1 Blade Servers with third-party Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN)-attached disk arrays are supported.

Available applications include: Cisco Unified Communications Manager, the Cisco Unity® application, Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco Unified Presence, Cisco Unified Contact Center Express, Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal, and Cisco Unified IP Interactive Voice Response (IP IVR).

VMware ESXi 4.0 is required. Application co-residency is also supported; refer to http://www.cisco.com/go/uc-virtualized for details.

• Cisco UCS C210 M1 General-Purpose Rack-Mount Servers with specific configurations of direct attached storage (DAS) are supported.

Available applications include: Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco Unified Contact Center Express.

VMware ESXi 4.0 is required. Application co-residency is not supported at this time; refer to http://www.cisco.com/go/uc-virtualized for details.

From this it shows: Cisco UCS B200 M1 Blade Servers is supported for Unity and VMware ESXi 4.0 is required.

Cisco UCS C210 M1 does not show that Unity is supported.

So based on that

We refer to the VMWare requirements for Unity is Supported Platform list:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6789/ps5745/ps2237/product_data_sheet0900aecd802132ef.html

Virtualization

Effective February 27, 2009, Cisco Unity 7.0 and 8.0 are supported on a VMware ESX 3.5 (or later) platform. The Cisco Unity on VMware solution relies on Cisco's customers to support and provide the VMware infrastructure and is recommended only for customers with significant expertise and investment in data-center virtualization. To get started, read the Design Guide for Cisco

Unity Virtualization at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/unity/virtualization_design/guide/cuvirtualdgx.html.

Indeed a bit confusing at this point. If you have access to Cisco Account team (SE) that might be a good step to take next.

Thanks,

Scott

David Hailey · ‎06-25-2010

So Chris, I think this may be the kicker:

C series requires DAS (direct attached storage).

Unity virtualization specs state "Cisco Unity virtual machine hard disks must reside on shared Fibre Channel storage. Traditional Fibre Channel host bus adapters and Fibre Channel over Ethernet converged network adapters are supported. NAS/NFS, iSCSI, and direct-attached storage are not supported."

So, that would indicate that Unity is not supported on C series due to use of DAS.

Hailey

cchow2006 · ‎06-25-2010

Thanks for the replies everyone! This was the conclusion I was coming to. It looks like the only way to get support on the C-Series is to have some kind of Fiber Channel storage.

Now the question is, will Cisco ever support a straight up C210M1 installation of Unity in the future? Does anyone know of any plans for this?