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Migrate BE6K to own ESX Cluster

mpieper
Level 1
Level 1

Hi everyone,

 

one of our locations has been set up with a BE6K some years ago. They had no virtual infrastructure of their own at that point, so that was the only reasonable choice.

 

By now, the location has grown, and they have their own set of ESX Servers. And so the following thought occured:

Is it possible to move the Callmanager VMs to that new ESX Infrastructure? That would make a couple of things easier: We would have proper monitoring (the BE6K is unmonitored), backup and snapshots would be easier, and we could get rid of the server itself.

 A couple of details about the System:

 

ESXi Version of BE6K: 5.5.0

Callmanager Version: 10.5.2.16900-1

There is also an unused IM&Presence Server, Version 10.5.2.20000-1

 

The new ESX is running ESXi 6.5.0. The CPUs are supported, we are running Callmanager on several Clusters of the same type in other locations. The licensing has been moved to a centralised PLM some time ago.

 

Can we simply move the Callmanager VMs to the new Cluster, or is there anything special that needs to be done?

 

 

3 Replies 3

Jonathan Schulenberg
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame
You would need to upgrade to CUCM 11.5 or 12.0 to get ESXi 6.5 support.

Also, most of the VMware features you cite as reasons to migrate (eg VCB, snapshots) aren’t supported. Details in the link below.

Lastly, you can run the Collab VMs on specs-based hardware but there are a lot of caveats. Read this site thoroughly before proceeding:
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/uc_system/virtualization/cisco-collaboration-virtualization.html

Thanks for the clarification regarding snapshots. I was not aware that they are not supported, luckily i have not required them yet ;)

 

This link from your document tells me ESXi 6.5 is supported for CUCM 10.5.2:

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/uc_system/virtualization/virtualization-cisco-unified-communications-manager.html

 

We have ten Callmanager 10.5.2 Instances running on various ESXi 6.5 Clusters, and they are all working fine. All were installed with support from a CISCO Partner. So i do not think we will get any problems with that.

 

Anything else that i need to be aware of? I think I will remove the IM&P Server from the cluster before i migrate, it is not used anyway. I found this for that procedure:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/unified-communications/remove-imp-publisher-from-cluster/td-p/2686834

 

 

 

Jaime Valencia
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

From a technical perspective, yes, that would be supported and it's doable, from a support perspective, you might run into issues.

A BE6K can ONLY be considered as such when it runs on a Cisco TRC that was sold as a 6K server. It's a HW/SW combo that you cannot simply remove the HW component and run in any other HW you want.

 

So, if you move to ANY other server, you'd lose the 6K level of support from Cisco, and you'd turn it into a regular CUCM deployment running on 3rd party HW.

In order to keep the 6K level of support, you'd need to have at least ONE 6K server in the cluster, and then meet all the 6K limitations that would come from that server (number of users/devices)

 

I suggest you reach out to your SE about this if you want to move all your CUCM VMs into 3rd party.

HTH

java

if this helps, please rate
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