March 25, 2008
CallManager 6.0 and 6.1 in VMWare
Sorry for the lack of posting as of late. All my time has been consumed in finishing up the CIPT (CallManager) series for CBTNuggets. While CallManager 4.X currently owns the market (and probably will for years to come), it looks as though Cisco is producing a pretty killer solution in Callmanager 6.X versions. So...I bought the software off Ebay and found this link detailing instructions on getting 6.X versions of CallManager running in VMware. What surprised me is that these instructions are from Cisco TAC!!! Hurrah for Cisco finally realizing that people will be running CCM in lab environments! No more registry hacks (not that you could with Linux anyhow). Cisco even provides the VMWare environment file that sets up VMWare exactly like you need it for CCM 6.X. Nice!
Here's the link: Click right here
Also, right on this link, Cisco's approval for running CCM in VMWare for demo/lab purposes: Click right here
UPDATE: I've attached the VMWare Environment file right here.
UPDATE #2: How funny - during the installation, the CCM 6 software recognized that I am running this in VMWare:
Also equally funny: I tried to install the CCM 6.X software on my MCS-7815 server from Cisco and it gave me an unsupported hardware message. VMWare works; older Cisco hardware does not :).
Posted by JC at 10:30 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
July 10, 2006
What's New in CallManager 5.X?
This post has been a long time in coming, but after Cisco Networkers 2006, I thought I'd put together the high points of the changes that are appearing in Cisco CallManager 5.X versions. Bullets always work best for me!
- Underlying Operating System – this is, by far, the biggest change to Cisco CallManager. Cisco has moved the software to an appliance model (I’m sure some industry pressure forced this). The CallManager runs on top of the RedHat Linux operating system; however, you will have no direct access to the operating system. What does this do?
- Easier installations & upgrades
- Increased security and reliability
- You can only access the CallManager via Cisco approved tools & interfaces
- Easier installations & upgrades
- The CallManager uses a new database platform: IBM Informix DB replaces Microsoft SQL 2000
- Two instances of CallManager can run on separate Linux partitions. This will make upgrades nearly seamless.
- The GUI now supports browsers other than Internet Explorer, but is no where near as pretty as the CallManager 4.X GUI.
- The licensing implementation has changed. The maximum number of provisioned devices in the CCM database are tracked and enforced (with a 5% overdraft of devices being accepted). No more free installs! The Cisco CallManager can run without a license, but it will not allow any changes to the database at all.
- The CallManager can still be a DHCP server; however, this feature is extremely limited and should be handled by another server/network device.
- The CallManager now supports SIP end-devices. Of course, the industry standard SIP version out there is VERY limited in functionality, so if you plan on using third party phones on a Cisco CallManager network, they won’t be able to do much.
- The SIP communications now support a feature called “Presence.” This allows you to see the state of any line in the IP Telephony cluster. So, I could scroll through the corporate directory and see if someone was using their phone (if the access privileges allowed) before calling them.
Those are the big ones; there are some other “minor” tweaks. If you know of any big features that I missed, feel free to add them!
Posted by JC at 9:17 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 14, 2006
CallManager on Non-MCS Equipment
I did it. I finally did it. I've got a Cisco CallManager 4.1(3) server running natively on a Dell Optiplex 270GX. Now, I'm not talking about the old registry hack forcing you to install Windows 2000, hack the registry, and then put the Cisco CallManager software on top of it. Doing this causes a host of problems because the base windows operating system does not have the correct services running and permissions set.
I'm talking about a hack that allows you to install the Cisco CallManager Windows image straight from the CD-ROM, setting all the correct permissions and giving you a working Cisco CallManager on a non-MCS server. Here's what I did:
Step 1: Download a Windows utility called FDIMAGE.EXE. This is typically used to create floppy boot disks from disk images for BSD/Linux. You can get this utility from here.
Step 2: Pop in in the CallManager Hardware Detect CD-ROM (Disk 1) into your PC - sorry, I can't give this one out :o)
Step 3: Put in a blank floppy disk
Step 4: Open a command prompt and type "fdimage d:\bootimg.bin a:" this copies the boot image from the CD-ROM to the floppy disk
Step 5: On the floppy disk, edit the autoexec.bat file (I'm having flashbacks to the MS-DOS days)
Step 6: Find the line in the autoexec.bat file that says "s:\tools\systype s:\tools\sssksys.ini" This line is right before the boot process does the hardware check to see what sort of server you have
Step 7: Hit enter after the above line and add the following two lines:
set XIMAGE=x345
goto IBMx345
Step 8: Save the file
Step 9: Boot off the floppy disk and put the Hardware Detect CD into the drive. Follow the wizard to blow the Windows 2000 image onto the non-MCS machine. It will prompt you for the OS Disk 3 (I'm using DVDs - it's DVD #2 of the OS install for me).
Step 10: After Windows comes online, you'll have to install your platform specific video/netcard/etc... drivers
Step 11: Pop in the Cisco CallManager CDs and proceed as normal! This rocks!
Of course, this is only in a lab environment. The great Cisco powers that be would definitely frown upon a TAC support call from a Cisco CallManager running on a desktop PC.
Posted by JC at 4:25 PM | Comments (85) | TrackBack