Cisco Expressway 12.6 VMWare ESXi 7.0 Support

[Anas Hafez]

I'm installing Expressway 12.6.4 on ESXi 7.0

But when i tried to download the OVA from the Cisco website i found the description stating only 6.5

I was wondering if this is also valid for 7.0 but hasn't been updated yet since there are no other images for 7.0 specific also the below link confirms the compatibility.

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

[Nithin Eluvathingal]

For the deployment on VMware 6.5+ i use the OVA which you mentioned. Its the one which you need to use for the latest versions. Even for version 14, only  OVA v6.5 is available.

I am not good in vmware, Go through the below link for Virtual Machine Compatibility.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-64D4B1C9-CD5D-4C68-8B50-585F6A87EBA0.html

[Vaijanath Sonvane]

Hi,

There are two software versions available:

1. One for vSphere Clients 6.0 and earlier

2. Second one for vSphere Clients 6.5 (which is also applicable for later versions)

Choose the second one for your deployment. 

[Roger Kallberg]

I must ask is there any specific reason for why you select to install 12.6.4 as there are several newer versions available?

[Anas Hafez]

For my specific case in the question I'm redeploying expressway to migrate it from one ESXi host to another using backup and restore since we want to avoid current expressway ESXi password recovery because of the possible short or long service interruption and we haven't deployed a cluster yet.

As a general best practice that i follow i would prefer to wait sometime before installing any new releases since they might have unexpected bugs to be revealed, for example i had upgraded to expressway 12.7 one time and we had to do a factory reset + 2 restarts (if i remember correctly) for the expressway upgrade to complete.

[Roger Kallberg]

If all that you want to do is move the VM to another ESXi host why do you not use vmotion to move it? It can be done either in offline or online mode. With offline being the option that I’d have own experience with.

[Anas Hafez]

Thanks Roger,

But as i have mentioned we need to do password recovery for the original expressway ESXi password in order to do that since the ESXi is not added to vcenter also we will need to upgrade ESXi version anyway in this case since the current expressway ESXi version doesn't match the vcenter version.

[Roger Kallberg]

Not sure if I fully understand what you mean by password recovery for ESXi? I’ve been apart of moving Expressway VMs across different ESXi hosts, with different passwords and it have not been any issues with this. Why do you think that you would need to do this just because you move a VM to another host?

[Anas Hafez]

Thanks Roger and sorry if i wasn't able to clarify my point in a clear way,

I understand that in order to move a VM from an ESXi host to another it's not mandatory to do a password reset or recovery for that matter although it's mandatory to have access to both ESXi (eg. knowing the usernames and passwords for both) but the odd situation i'm in that we don't have the ESXi password that the current expressway is deployed on also it's not currently added to vcenter, is there a way under those circumstances to migrate a VM (expressway in our case) from that ESXi to another one without doing a password recovery first (without having access to the ESXi host)?

[Roger Kallberg]

Sorry but this is a question to ask on a VMware support forum. I don’t have that deep level of knowledge in that area.

[Nithin Eluvathingal]

If you have access to expressway, take backup and do a fresh install and restore the backup. 

[Adam Pawlowski]

Per the release notes, 12.7+ support ESXi 7.0 . Unlike the other UC products, you need to check the release notes for the versions for qualifiers for ESXi. The general implication that patches/later versions are supported doesn't seem to apply to this product.