05-11-2011 06:00 AM - edited 07-03-2021 08:11 PM
Does anyone have any experience with massive rollouts of 7925G wireless IP phones?
We have 200+ to roll out. We're trying to find a way to streamline the process.
Does anyone have any tips?
Any ways to avoid configuring each phone individually?
Thanks!
Ven
Solved! Go to Solution.
05-12-2011 10:12 AM
Look for something called the Cisco 792x (or 7921 but it works for 792x models) Bulk Deployment utility. I have gone as far as a proof of concept and been able to make it work. Then the rest is procedural in-house items. Give the following a read to get the general idea. First I did a default config which shared a username & password just to verify the process worked - this is not best practice as one disabled account could pretty much take down all of your wireless phones. Download the Bulk Deployment Utility from Cisco and there should be some documentation available for it too (http://www.cisco.com/web/software/282074239/14006/792xBD.1-0-Readme.pdf). After then initial testing I worked with the Bulk Deployment Utility to create per phone configuration files that uses a CSV file (list of phone MAC address, usernames, and passwords) that are combined with a template with the rest of your settings required to configure the wireless connectivity on the phone. Overall there will be more prep work involved (creating accounts for each phone, generating the config files and placing them on the TFTP server but it works fairly slick overall.
Ok the following is from an email summarizing my playing around with this a couple weeks back:
General Process
1) Grab new phone and insert battery
2) Power on the device - it connects to the 'cisco' ssid and pulls down and applies config from the file WLAN
3) Reboot the phone (manually)
4) Phone connects to the production network and pulls down the latest firmware.
Step #3 was hanging me up longer than I care to admit - I had expected after downloading the config file that it would apply and reconnect to the network and go on its merry way but for whatever reason that did not seem to be the case. A power off & on resolved that issue and at least produces consistent behavior.
The date never completely syncs up but I believe that will occur once the phones are defined on the Call Manager and phone registration completes. There are methods for generating a CSV file containing MAC Address, username, and password for bulk unique deployments. This file then gets used with the WLANDefault.xml file (which would be changed to contain no credential info) and will generate unique files per phone (WLAN
The set up is completed here - using VLAN 93 (192.168.93.0/24) and the 'cisco' SSID was added only to apname (non-broadcasting). An ACL has been applied which only allows that network to get a DHCP address from the DHCP server and to pull files from the TFTP server.
A process will need to be developed for the user IDs for the devices and then adding them to a CSV file. That CSV file would then be used by the Bulk Deployment Utility to create config files for each MAC address in the file.
05-12-2011 10:12 AM
Look for something called the Cisco 792x (or 7921 but it works for 792x models) Bulk Deployment utility. I have gone as far as a proof of concept and been able to make it work. Then the rest is procedural in-house items. Give the following a read to get the general idea. First I did a default config which shared a username & password just to verify the process worked - this is not best practice as one disabled account could pretty much take down all of your wireless phones. Download the Bulk Deployment Utility from Cisco and there should be some documentation available for it too (http://www.cisco.com/web/software/282074239/14006/792xBD.1-0-Readme.pdf). After then initial testing I worked with the Bulk Deployment Utility to create per phone configuration files that uses a CSV file (list of phone MAC address, usernames, and passwords) that are combined with a template with the rest of your settings required to configure the wireless connectivity on the phone. Overall there will be more prep work involved (creating accounts for each phone, generating the config files and placing them on the TFTP server but it works fairly slick overall.
Ok the following is from an email summarizing my playing around with this a couple weeks back:
General Process
1) Grab new phone and insert battery
2) Power on the device - it connects to the 'cisco' ssid and pulls down and applies config from the file WLAN
3) Reboot the phone (manually)
4) Phone connects to the production network and pulls down the latest firmware.
Step #3 was hanging me up longer than I care to admit - I had expected after downloading the config file that it would apply and reconnect to the network and go on its merry way but for whatever reason that did not seem to be the case. A power off & on resolved that issue and at least produces consistent behavior.
The date never completely syncs up but I believe that will occur once the phones are defined on the Call Manager and phone registration completes. There are methods for generating a CSV file containing MAC Address, username, and password for bulk unique deployments. This file then gets used with the WLANDefault.xml file (which would be changed to contain no credential info) and will generate unique files per phone (WLAN
The set up is completed here - using VLAN 93 (192.168.93.0/24) and the 'cisco' SSID was added only to apname (non-broadcasting). An ACL has been applied which only allows that network to get a DHCP address from the DHCP server and to pull files from the TFTP server.
A process will need to be developed for the user IDs for the devices and then adding them to a CSV file. That CSV file would then be used by the Bulk Deployment Utility to create config files for each MAC address in the file.
05-12-2011 11:35 AM
Sounds great! Thank you very much!
Ven
Discover and save your favorite ideas. Come back to expert answers, step-by-step guides, recent topics, and more.
New here? Get started with these tips. How to use Community New member guide