VCS Starter Pack and Movi user management

[pdinapoli]

Hi all.

looking for feedback from someone who's an expert with Movi deployments.

I have a Cisco SE person telling me that TMS server + licenses are now required to make Movi work.  I have been directly involved with several VCS based TelePresence deployments that had no TMS server running...and I'm thinking she's wrong - TMS is not required.  But her last message to me was this:

"You may not have a TMS appliance but you have an instance of TMS licenses somewhere… the Movi license key gets applied to TMS."

I find this when I dig around on CCO:

Cisco TelePresence Video Communication Server (Cisco VCS) Starter Pack Express: documentation and configuration information The Cisco VCS Starter Pack Express includes 50 Movi registrations, a  Cisco VCS Expressway with basic capability, 50 FindMe accounts,  capability for five concurrent calls and five PrecisionHD™ USB cameras. See the Cisco VCS Starter Pack Express deployment guide (document number  D14618) for full information about how to configure a Cisco VCS  Expressway to act as a provisioning server, registrar and proxy server  for Movi endpoints. This article applies to the following products: Cisco TelePresence Movi Cisco Video Communication Server June 16th, 2011

What would be the point of selling the Starter Pack with Movi Registrations - if you then had to spend another few thousand on TMS.

Can someone help clarify?

Thanks,

Paul

[Justin Ferello]

Paul,

If you have already purchased the VCS Starter Pack, then you do not need TMS to create or use MOVI.  You would create the users right from the VCS interface.

Justin

[pdinapoli]

Thanks for the feedback Justin.

We are in agreement.  I dont know why this Cisco SE is telling me this.  I hate to argue with them and tell them they're wrong...but in this case - her insisting we have to sell TMS to make Movi work makes me think she has a boat payment to make, or an expensive vacation home and this is just a wayt to sell more infrastructure.

I've seen too many instances where TMS was simply not in the picture to support her claim that movi license keys are tied to TMS.

Thanks again,

Paul

[Martin Koch]

To make movi work a Cisco VCS Starter Pack Express shall be enough.

But this is quite limited. Without knowing your planned deployment with its needs/demands it is hard to say if the

starter pack is the best solution.

[pdinapoli]

Yep - agreed.  for just a few Movi clients (starter pack comes with 5) - direct provisioning with VCS seems fine.

Totally understand that if the environment starts to grow and get more complicated - TMS is really nice to have.  But definitely not required to make Movi function.

Unless of course Cisco is about to announce some changes when they start calling Movi "Jabber for TelePresence" client and they do something to force TMS requirement.

[Martin Koch]

It is already called "Cisco Jabber Video for TelePresence". 4.3 is released:

4.3.12.13351

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=283613653&catid=280789323&softwareid=280886992&release=4.3.12.13351&rellifecycle=&relind=AVAILABLE&reltype=latest

So you can try it! :-)

I would guess it will still work, but sure some new features might only

work properly with TMS (or at least its easer to configure)

Please vote the answers!

[Ricardo Sicheran]

Martin,

Can I use TMS with VCS Starter pack to provision Movi clients on the VCS starter and devices?

[Martin Koch]

Hi Ricardo!

What is your idea behind that thought? Which functionality do you lack?

The VCS Starter Pack Express is designed to be stand alone / out of the box.

You can upgrade the starter pack to a "real" vcs-e if you have demands which you

can not solve with the starter pack and then add it to a TMS for full blown

provisioning and management.

Martin

[Ricardo Sicheran]

Hi Martin,

The VCS Starter is working as it should.  The thought was to view how TMS handle provisioning and phonebooks to endpoints.

Thanks!

[Martin Koch]

I see.

The provisioning part is described in the TMS provisioing deployment guide (incl some screenshots)

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/telepresence/infrastructure/tms/config_guide/Cisco_TMS_Provisioning_Deployment_Guide_13-0.pdf

You might want to take a look there.

I think the phonebook part is not very well described, not even in the TMS guides.

Just picture that you can have multiple phonebooks which you can set up as a flat searchable list

towards different movi user groups. You also get one list with all movi users which you most likely

would set up as a phonebook for your movi users.

Btw, you can download TMS and take a look how TMS works and how to configure the phonebooks,

http://ftp.tandberg.com/pub/software/tms/tms13/TMS13.1.2/

but do not try to connect your VCS-SE-E! this will most likely break something

(the provisioning part is very sensitive, ...).

Martin

Please vote answers on how helpful they were for you!

[johnmer22]

PDInapoli

Your SE is actually 100% right TMS is required, all provisioning for movi is done in TMS- Agent. There is no question about it. I just don't think he is explaining it right.

The trick here is in the VCS starter kit includes stripped a dumb down version of TMS Agent and provision component. Basically it is not the standard VCS-E software. This limits you to 50 Movi users (though I have seen a part number for 100 users but not sure if that works) and 5 traversal calls.

When you want either a full expressway or more Movi users you have to blow that away and you HAVE to get a full version of TMS to have movi work.

Basically you cannot buy a Full up expressway and Movi without TMS and expect Movi to work. All the keys for a full up Movi are put into TMS, and TMS agent handles all the provisions.

The starter pack is the only exception to this and is a very limited product. Not something you would implement in a full infrastructure enterprise environment except for testing purposes for a customer.

Hope that helps,

John

[Martin Koch]

I disagree with your 100%.

The initial question was, can I run Movi with just the VCS Starter Pack Express with out an TMS.

Any yes, you can.

Yes, Movi requires provisioning to run. In general its:

* TMS + VCS + Licenses

In this model the License management for Movi is indeed handled by TMS

btw, you also need a "Device Provisioning Key" on the VCS, not only movi Licenses on the TMS

* VCS Starter Pack Express

Which gives you up to 50 registrations, limited findme and 5 (default) up to 25 (additional purchase) call licenses.

Here a info from the deployment guide: (found in the cisco vcs doc section)

[johnmer22]

Martin,

I'm sorry, I may have not been clear in how I mean that. I was just saying she is right but did not explain herself properly or explain it properly. I think you may have explained it an even better way.

The initial question was to clarify her statement that you need TMS to run movi.

Her quote to him was "You may not have a TMS appliance but you have an instance of TMS licenses somewhere… the Movi license key gets applied to TMS." Which what I said, the Starter Pack Expressway runs a dumbdown version of TMS agent and TMS provisioning to manage Movi. This is not an inherent part of the Expressway and is special to the starter pack. The reason she said that is if you ask any old tanberg guy they will tell you that it is the Agent and Provisioning from TMS just imbedded in the Expressway. Don't know if that is true or not from a code stand point but that is what I was always told.

He also made the statement " Totally understand that if the environment starts to grow and get more complicated - TMS is really nice to have.  But definitely not required to make Movi function" Outside of the starter package you can not run Movi with out TMS. I just wanted to clear that up for him that you do require TMS once you outgrow the starter package.

I guess it just depends how you look at it. We hardly do implementations without a full Expressway - Control. I always look at the starter pack as just that and intro to VTC appliance. Also the upgarde is not as easy as advertised. Everytime we have done a starter pack upgrade we had to do a hardware swap on the Expressway. The software upgrade would not get rid of the provisioning component so it would not do the passthrough to TMS agent, after factory default and 6.x and 7.x upgrades .. really strange.

Still nice to know that you can do 25 traversal linceses to a starter pack, wasn't aware 

[pdinapoli]

Great reply John Mercado - thank you!  That's essentially the detail I was hoping I would find by posting my original question.  The SE been referring to - she's notorious for short one line answers...and when I request more info she's always in customer meetings and never available.

Anyway - this has been very helpful.

thanks again.