Ask the Expert: Plan, Design, and Implement Mobile Remote Access, the Cisco Collaboration Edge Architecture

[ciscomoderator]

Welcome to the Cisco® Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions about planning, designing, and implementing mobile remote access (Cisco Collaboration Edge Architecture) with Cisco subject matter experts Aashish Jolly and Abhijit Anand.

Cisco Collaboration Edge Architecture is an architecture that provides VPN-less access of Cisco Unified Communications resources to Cisco Jabber® users. This discussion is dedicated to addressing questions about design best practices while implementing mobile remote access.

For more information, refer to the Unified Communications Mobile and Remote Access via Cisco VCS deployment guide. 

Aashish Jolly is a network consulting engineer who is currently serving as the Cisco Unified Communications consultant for the ExxonMobil Global account. Earlier at Cisco, he was part of the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), where he helped Cisco partners with installation, configuring, and troubleshooting Cisco Unified Communications products such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Manager Express, Cisco Unity® solutions, Cisco Unified Border Element, voice gateways and gatekeepers, and more. He has been associated with Cisco Unified Communications for more than seven years. He holds a bachelor of technology degree as well as Cisco CCIE® Voice (#18500), CCNP^® Voice, and CCNA® certifications and VMware VCP5 and Red Hat RHCE certifications.

Abhijit Singh Anand is a network consulting engineer with the Cisco Advanced Services field delivery team in New Delhi. His current role involves designing, implementing, and optimizing large-scale collaboration solutions for enterprise and defense customers. He has also been an engineer at the Cisco TAC. Having worked on multiple technologies including wireless and LAN switching, he has been associated with Cisco Unified Communications technologies since 2006. He holds a master’s degree in computer applications and multiple certifications, including CCIE Voice (#19590), RHCE, and CWSP and CWNP.

Remember to use the rating system to let Aashish and Abhijit know if you have received an adequate response. 

Because of the volume expected during this event, our experts might not be able to answer every question. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Cisco Support Community Collaboration, Voice and Video page, in the Jabber Clients subcommunity, shortly after the event. This event lasts through June 20, 2014. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other Cisco Support Community members.

[Aashish Jolly]

Hi Muhammed basheer,

  If is fine to have multiple domains. And it depends on how your users login to Jabber client, I'm assuming they use userID@example.com. In this case, you need to make sure you have _cisco-uds.tcp_cucm.example.com SRV record created and is resolvable to CUCM by Exp-C. The reason is, the URL constructed by Jabber uses the domain specified in the JabberID. From the logs you provided, I see that you login as the internal domain i.e. basheer@example.net. In this case, you need to update the voiceservicesdomain=example.com in jabber-config.xml. Load this file on CUCM TFTP, register the client internally and then move the client outside, re-try it should work.

See snippet below

<Policies>
<VoiceServicesDomain>example.com</VoiceServicesDomain>
</Policies>

"Restart of TFTP needed"

You could also do this on jabber-config-user.xml on the client itself, this would not require you to login internally first to get the jabber-config.xml file from TFTP.

HTH,

Aashish

[Muhammed Basheer Kuniyil]

Thanks Aashish for support,   Will check and let you know the updates

Regards,

[tenaro.gusatu.novici]

You guys are great! Thanks again for all the answers!

Quick question about jabber-config.xml file: if plan is to implement MRA feature based on X8.1.1 and Jabber 8.7.2, do we need jabber-config.xml? If yes, can you give us some what issues it will solve. Let's say that plan is to use only basic phone calls and maybe URI dialing.

[Aashish Jolly]

Hi Tenaro,

   Jabber 8.7.2 is too old. I would suggest upgrading the clients to supported version which support MRA natively i.e.

Jabber for Windows 9.7

Jabber for iPhone/iPad 9.6.1

Jabber for Android 9.6

Jabber for MAC 9.6

Disadvantages of using older jabber clients

1. Tweaking of jabber-config.xml file needed, which means clients must either register inside the network and grab the jabber-config.xml file or update jabber-config-user.xml file at the client to support MRA.

2. TAC may ask for upgrade if there's an issue, as clients with native MRA support might fix that issue. Time to resolution would increase.

jabber-config.xml file is used whenever some customization is needed or some non-default behavior is required. There are certain restrictions on what all is supported when jabber connects over expressway, so make sure you checkout the jabber client specific documentation to discover the restrictions.

Cheers!

Aashish

[tenaro.gusatu.novici]

On EXP-C, under Configuration -> Unified Communications -> Unified CM Servers I added only CUCM server I have in a lab but the Status says TCP: Failed as you can see from attachment. I'm sure I enter correct admin account (same one I use when logging into http://cucm/ccmadmin). Do I need to configure anything on CUCM side to fix the status?
 

[Aashish Jolly]

TCP failed is most likely a connectivity issue. Could you try pinging cucm from Exp-C ?

Maintenance --> Tools --> Network Utilities --> Ping

Also check the event status and see what reason does it give for failure

Status --> Logs --> Event Log

You may also want to check if AXL API Access role is assigned to the user you're using in Exp-C CUCM discovery.