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on 01-25-2014 10:12 AM
This document was generated from CDN thread
Created by: paul jurkowski on 22-03-2012 10:28:10 AM
Hello-
First I'm a long way from being a developer, so that's my disclaimer. Here's my issue:
There was already an application set up for someone to call in, rercord a message and then this message would get played in one of our ICM scripts. What I have found is that the FTP root is set to only one of 4 media servers and that in the ICM script it was calling only that specific media server. So I basically followed suit and what I found is that the recorded wav file would upload but there would be different versions playing even though there is only 1 wav file on our media servers. For the sake of time right now, I won't get too deep into the architecture as I'm assuming it's getting cached on some of the VXML gateways. So I created a new, simple studio application and set it play the file directly in an audio step from the media server, so I have it set to play http://10.167.xx.xx/en-us/app/playmessage.wav playing the file directly which I thought would work. However, I'm getting the same results again. The correct message is playing only sometimes. Is it possible to play only this file from this specific location or is it something to do with the VXML caching files, etc.
My plan is to share all 4 media servers either by FTP or folder permissions but for the time being can I make this work or is it just not that simple?
thanks Paul
Subject: RE: New Message from paul jurkowski in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Genera
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 22-03-2012 10:44:17 AM
>>> as I'm assuming it's getting cached on some of the VXML gateways.
It certainly is.
Caching time (also called expiration time) is controlled by the web server. If you are using IIS, check Content Expiration time. This can be controlled at the folder level, and inheritance applies, but a sub-folder can override the parent.
You probably want these recordings to go into a special folder. You can set “Expire Immediately” on the folder and then no files will be saved in the http client cache on the gateway. Take care in doing this because it has a huge impact in performance and only apply it if that is absolutely necessary. Even a modest expiration time of 1 hour will be a vast improvement over “Expire Immediately”. You cannot just leave this blank, or the default on the cache will apply – that’s normally 10 days.
But if you want it to work immediately, you have no choice here – set “Expire Immediately” on the folder where the recordings are. If the recordings are mixed in with the other prompts for which caching is required, it ends up being very messy. So a dedicated folder/directory is my recommendation.
In a similar application I created a small FTP class to FTP the file to each of the media stores. There is a Cisco element available in CVP 8.5, but at the time I had to create a custom class.
By the way, there is NO really good reason to have 4 media stores. Just have 2 – one at the A side and 1 at the B side.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Bill Webb on 22-03-2012 10:56:43 AM
For the issue at hand, I'm not sure how you could be getting a different prompt playing in your sample app unless:
1. Some other app is overwriting the prompt unbeknownst to you!
2. The IP address is a VIP or is otherwise hitting a load balancer or something and actually sending you to a different server when the gateway cache expires.
I typically set up CVP as "combo boxes" whenever I possibly can, meaning Call Server and VXML Server on the same machine. This is really the Cisco standard at this point anyway. In that scenario, I've set up a recording app and a custom class/element on a 4-6 CVP Server deployment, each configured with FTP server. The recording element saves the new recording on whatever server that the call arrives on (pass in server's IP as session data to the app). Then the custom element uses pretty straightforward Java to get the current system's IP (or again pull it in from session data), and copies from the current server to all the other FTP servers, essentially creating a manual "synching" app.
I've tried some other 3rd party software that performs FTP synching, but I like having the control within the app, since you can see the results and proactively troubleshoot if problems occur in the FTP transfers or anywhere else.
- Bill
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Janine Graves on 22-03-2012 01:38:41 PM
Hi,
Note that Geoff is correct about setting the Expiry times on the Media Server, but that'll only take effect after audio URLs currently in the gateway cache expire!
If the audio URL is already cached on a vxml gateway and it hasn't expired yet, then the gateway doesn't bother to check with the media server to see if there's a newer version.
The VxmlGateway only checks for updates when the URL that's cached has expired (the age is greater than the FreshTime when you execute 'show http client cache') AND the audio is suppoed to be spoken to a caller in a VXML page.
So, even if the audio file is the same on your media servers, it may not have expired yet on one or more gateways, so you'll still hear the old audio.
To force the vxml gateway to check for a newer version of an audio URL, you can try these CLI commands
Option a) 'show http client cache' (look at the age of the audio you want to change)l then execute 'audio-prompt load <URL>' CAUTION - this always claims to be successful, even if it hasn't updated the cache because the audio file is in use). Then execute 'show http client cache' again and see if the age of the audio has gotten smaller - if so, good. If not, try the next option.
Option b) Use the CLI command 'set http client cache stale' - this sets everything to stale, there's no way to set one audio URL to stale. Thenfor each audio to be spoken, the gateway checks to see if the 'last modified date' on the media server is newer than what's in the cache. Only downloading audio with new 'last modified date'.
Janine
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: paul jurkowski on 22-03-2012 02:17:31 PM
Thanks everyone, this was extremely helpful.
Subject: Re: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 11:50:16 AM
Unless you absolutely need immediate exp'n, i wouldn't do that, but just.
Set it to a very low value (like 1 minute). I believe that if a file can't
be cached, then the gateway must retrieve it for each caller. But, if it is
in cache and has expired, then gateway does conditional get and checks
w/media server for updates, retrieving the audio only if it has newer
last-modified date. Much less bandwidth usage.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original message-----
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
To: "cdicuser@developer.cisco.com" <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
Sent: Tue, Mar 27, 2012 15:11:00 GMT+00:00
Subject: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Discussion - All Versions: RE: App not playing recorded wav file
consistently
Subject: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 27-03-2012 12:08:16 PM
Janine,
That would be good if it worked that way. Are you certain – have you watched debug on the http client cache to confirm?
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Gen
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 01:07:16 PM
Geoff,
I have seen the 304 response codes in the iis log. But, honestly, I havent
turned on debug and verified it. I am using the info from the white paper.
To the best of your knowledge, how does it work?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original message-----
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
To: "cdicuser@developer.cisco.com" <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
Sent: Tue, Mar 27, 2012 16:08:17 GMT+00:00
Subject: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in
Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: paul jurkowski on 27-03-2012 10:22:09 AM
So basically unless the cache is expiring the vxml gateway will not look for a new version of the audio file correct and it will be updated as each cache expires? I found out that our gateways are set to refresh at a certain time/length to accomdate for other applications so it looks like I'm kind of stuck. Unless, as Bill was saying, I can get the files to upload to all 4 media servers, but then again, if the file already exists, it won't look for a new version until the cache expires is what I'm understanding.
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Bill Webb on 27-03-2012 10:57:17 AM
The first part is correct, but if I'm understanding what you mention about "to accommodate for other applications", then you just need to do as Geoff mentioned - set up a separate folder for these more "dynamic" prompts, and set the expiration very low, if not immediate.
You can even set expiration on individual files/filenames, but it might be easier to modify the application to write the files to a separate subdirectory, and then you can set the expiration and any other parameters on that folder without impacting any other apps.
- Bill
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: paul jurkowski on 27-03-2012 11:10:04 AM
It's another 3rd party application that is also caching files on the vxml gateways. Not sure if that helps...
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Bill Webb on 27-03-2012 11:11:00 AM
So to be more specific with an example, however generic:
Say your standard application audio files are in the directory:
.../audio/en-US/
On the web server, this folder may be set to expire in 60 minutes or whatever. What you would do is create a new directory named "Dynamic":
.../audio/en-US/Dynamic/
For that "Dynamic" subfolder, go into your web.xml or into IIS Admin and set the expiration on that specific folder to "Immediately Expire", or some small value, like 5 minutes. That now allows the files in just the "en-US" directory to maintain their 60 minute expiration, but anything pulled from the "Dynamic" subdirectory will have immediate expiration set in the header.
- Bill
Subject: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Gen
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 12:59:16 PM
No.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original message-----
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
To: "cdicuser@developer.cisco.com" <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
Sent: Tue, Mar 27, 2012 16:08:17 GMT+00:00
Subject: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in
Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Subject: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Replied by: Bill Webb on 27-03-2012 01:59:20 PM
I'm curious about this as well, because the way I believe it to work is that once the header indicates the content is expired, the file is downloaded again, regardless of the last changed time stamp.
Certainly it would be more intelligent if it operated the way you describe, and maybe that is the case - I've not done debugs either and don't currently have a system to test that with.
Can anybody else confirm or deny?
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: Hemal Mehta on 27-03-2012 04:24:16 PM
Janine,
Just to add. There is more logic to it.
When a audio file is first downloaded from HTTP server and HTTP header contains the message:
Cache-Control: max-age = < >
then this will be used to determine the stale time of the audio file. If this is not included then difference between expiration date and current date time is used to determine if the file is stale. If even this information is not present then fresh time is taken as 10% of the difference between last modified time and date. In case even this is not present in header we can assign it using :
http client cache refresh ( between 1-864000)
Also the conditional get applies to only non streaming mode.
Hemal
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums [mailto:cdicuser@developer.cisco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 2:04 PM
To: cdicuser@developer.cisco.com
Subject: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Discussion - All Versions: Re: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Janine Graves has created a new message in the forum "General Discussion - All Versions":
--------------------------------------------------------------
The http cache whitepaper 'claims' the 'conditional get' with only
downloading 'if last modified date' is newer. Can anyone confirm?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original message-----
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
To: "cdicuser@developer.cisco.com" <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
Sent: Tue, Mar 27, 2012 17:59:21 GMT+00:00
Subject: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Discussion - All Versions: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in
Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
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Subject: Re: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 08:28:16 PM
Hi Paul,
Does the vxml property 'audiomaxage' override this? That is, if a file in
cache is not yet stale but a file is to be spoken with the audiomaxage
property set to 1 (or 0), will that cause the gw to act as if the cached
version is 'stale'?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original message-----
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
To: "cdicuser@developer.cisco.com" <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
Sent: Wed, Mar 28, 2012 00:04:02 GMT+00:00
Subject: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY
THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Subject: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: Hemal Mehta on 27-03-2012 09:48:16 PM
Audio maxage vxml property has a higher preference and it overrides. I have verified this in the past.
Hemal
________________________________
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums [cdicuser@developer.cisco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 7:28 PM
To: cdicuser@developer.cisco.com
Subject: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Discussion - All Versions: Re: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Janine Graves has created a new message in the forum "General Discussion - All Versions":
max
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Paul,
Does the vxml property 'audiomaxage' override this? That is, if a file in
cache is not yet stale but a file is to be spoken with the audiomaxage
property set to 1 (or 0), will that cause the gw to act as if the cached
version is 'stale'?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original message-----
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
To: "cdicuser@developer.cisco.com" <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
Sent: Wed, Mar 28, 2012 00:04:02 GMT+00:00
Subject: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY
THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
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To respond to this post, please click the following link:
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Subject: Re: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 03:04:16 PM
The http cache whitepaper 'claims' the 'conditional get' with only
downloading 'if last modified date' is newer. Can anyone confirm?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
-----Original message-----
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
To: "cdicuser@developer.cisco.com" <cdicuser@developer.cisco.com>
Sent: Tue, Mar 27, 2012 17:59:21 GMT+00:00
Subject: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Discussion - All Versions: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in
Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Subject: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Replied by: Paul Tindall on 27-03-2012 08:03:56 PM
You may find the attachment of interest as it shows the refresh mechanism via extracts from traces.
The Cache-Control header max-age is the primary way to specify the time in cache before it will be refreshed. If you want to modify the Cache-Control header when using the CVP Tomcat instance for media file serving then check out the document here http://developer.cisco.com/documents/10501/2125796/Cache+Control+Tomcat.pdf
Subject: RE: Re: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Gene
Replied by: Paul Tindall on 29-03-2012 09:13:53 PM
Janine,
Yes, that's correct, the fresh-time that's been set by the Cache-Control header won't be affected but the audiomaxage value you set will be tested against the current age in cache and a prompt refresh attempt will be made if age-in-cache > your audiomaxage value.
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 12-04-2012 11:35:05 PM
All good stuff, and we get an exchange of ideas which is what this forum is about. But there are always lots of environmental differences in play which make us choose different strategies. All I can ask is you think about it, and understand your options.
Of course, one of the killer reasons to use IIS is to make your microapps work. I’m a huge fan of microapps. Unlike young Bill. ;-)
I have some very big deployments that have many Call Servers, so if we had to distribute the media files to all CVP/VXML servers to put them under Tomcat the audio files would be on 20 servers. By nominating just two servers as Media Stores the distribution is controlled.
I do have some deployments where all servers are Call Servers/VXML servers and agree that simply using passing the Call.RoutingClient as the app_server ECC and setting this in the IP host table to ensure the VXML comes from the same server as the box managing the call is the easiest way to debug. Good plan.
In Studio, I set up the default audio path in the properties of the app Foobar to something like http://10.10.0.10/en-us/app/Foobar/ and my audio elements simply have the name of the wav file – even easier than Bill’s idea. Deploy to the multiple VXML servers on side A. Change the default audio path for the other side and deploy to all the VXML servers on side B.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Replied by: Bill Webb on 12-04-2012 09:26:58 PM
Somewhat off-topic here, but since there's plenty of interest and documentation around using the CVP VXML Server Tomcat instance as the Media Server, and IMHO there's all sorts of advantages to doing so, especially for a "retentive" guy like myself who thinks things like "why would I want to install an IIS instance on this server if I don't need to??"...I gotta ask again to this group since I have yet to receive an answer with any specific technical details:
Does anyone know why there is a caveat when running CVP on UCS in VMWare that you cannot use the Tomcat instance for a Media Server - instead, you must load an *additional* component with IIS??
Other than some possible multi-threading thing that Micro$oft has figured out better than the Apache Tomcat developers that is exploited in a VMWare setting, this makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Anyone have any insight on this? Paul?
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 12-04-2012 09:50:05 PM
I have no interest in using an application server such as Tomcat to deliver simple WAV files – IIS does this, and very nicely too. And probably it’s faster.
Expiration Lifetime is much easier to control in IIS. I have varying lifetimes depending on the directory and the purpose. Queue music may be 30 days – emergency messages may be 1 hour. And sometimes within a directory I want to control a new file individually. Much easier.
I like to whip up a little summary HTML page in the root of the Web server that indicates what locals and apps are running, and provide a links. With directory browsing turned on the reviewers can see the listing of wav files check (replay) any wav file from their browser. It’s a simple URL – just an IP address. The summary is the default document – hit the IP address in a URL and it’s displayed.
I often run the Media Stores through a load balancer like CSS – IIS is very slightly easier to configure.
Now I’ve been at this a long time, and Media Stores were there well before CVP VXML – so I’m a bit set in my ways, and I’ll give you that. But I can’t think of any GOOD reason to use Tomcat to deliver WAV files.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Bill Webb on 12-04-2012 11:16:10 PM
Fair enough, so let me offer what I think the good reasons are, with the following caveats/assumptions, because I'm also pretty set in my ways:
- All CVP Servers are combo Call Server/VXML Server/Media Server, because I don't like the distribution of individual components. Redundancy comes from multiple servers.
- All gateways are combo ingress/VXML, for same reasons noted above
- All interaction done with Studio apps (we established in that other thread that I'm no fan of microapps! ;-)
So with that said, a call comes into a gateway, and through dial-peers and a local SRV record finds a CVP Server (because I'm over H.323 and I don't see much of a need for SIP proxies - also another thread!).
ICM does the Send to VRU, and CVP uses Send to Originator to call bootstrap on the ingress gateway. ICM script uses Call.RoutingClient or the new ECC "cvp_server_info" to set hostname/IP of the CVP combo box that the gateway is already talking to - http://[hostname/IP]:7000/CVP - and calls first Run External Script.
In the Studio app, the default audio path is (by default) "/CVP/audio", which means if you use Tomcat, your audio path entries can just be "en-us/main_menu.wav". No need to pass in parameters to the app and do an Application Modifier to set another full URL string for an IIS media server - you simply change directories to get to the audio files, so all references can be relative paths.
I'll give you that IIS is a little easier to configure for expirations and such because it has a GUI tool, but I'll give that up any day for the convenience that Tomcat provides in simplifying my Studio apps, and to some extent, even my ICM scripting (or at least freeing up ECC space, since I don't have to pass in a media server URL as a parameter to my app.
The other piece from me comes before all of this, which is the fact that if I have a base Windows Server install, I run the CVP installer and I'm done - I have all the components I need. This might be where some more esoteric performance characteristics come into play somehow, which leads into that VM/UCS recommendation, but until proven otherwise, I look at like this - Tomcat is already running for VXML Server anyway, and using it to fetch audio from a subdirectory in between VXML fetches doesn't seem like it would cause a lot of additional load. On the other hand, loading IIS, even minimally, means at least a few more processes running on the server. Maybe this is akin to a Formula 1 tech shaving a control arm to save a few ounces, but hey, I get into that kinda stuff... ;-)
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Bill Webb on 13-04-2012 12:09:23 AM
Definitely the biggest "it depends" statement with CVP finishes with "on the architecture"...!
I am curious, though, of your big deployment. Was it with an older version? The largest ones I've been involved with were:
A deployment that started at CVP 4.1 and H.323, but was architected even slightly before that with a scalability number of I think 300 ports per server. The initial deployment was 32 servers - 16 per side - but that has since been cut in less than half and is probably still somewhat oversized based on actual usage numbers. That one did use a dedicated pair of Media Servers, one per side, and ran IIS because I recommended it, knowing it would be easier to configure! ;-)
And the other big one was similarly scaled, but was more recent (CVP 7) using SIP and architected around the 850 port/server limit at that time, so it was only 8 servers total (4 per side).
The point here is that my conviction with the architecture I described has grown with the product allowing that architecture to "fit" more often. At the current 1200 port/server limit (on standard hardware) or even the 900/instance on VM/UCS, I think it is safe to say that deployments with more than 4 CVP Servers *should* become fewer and further between. Ok, maybe "the cloud" concept will breathe new life into massive SP architectures and I'll be proven wrong, but when/if they do come around, they are of a scale that will easily absorb a load balancer or five and other "accessories" to make the whole thing work. Gateways seem to be in the same boat - the two examples above both used separate ingress and VXML gateways also, but I'm not sure the same systems designed today with new gateways would do the same again.
And yes - all good stuff all the way around, and why I frequent these forums more than most any others!!
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 13-04-2012 12:49:05 AM
The thing about the 1200 port limit for CVP Call Servers is misleading.
Let’s take a simple example, based on a deployment that has been through a few design cycles. 7000 agents, 5 minute calls, 1 minute ACW. So at full tilt, each agent can handle 10 calls an hour so a BHCA of 70,000.
If you plug this into the 8.6(2) Solution Sizing Tool with nominal transfers and agent greeting you need 994 CVP port licences and the tool requests 8 servers (MCS boxes not VMs) in N+1 redundancy with 90% utilization. You may be reluctant to run them that hard, so 10 servers may be more to your liking.
So 1200 ports per Call Server is not achieved.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Hemal Mehta on 13-04-2012 08:31:05 AM
Just to add. I was initially more inclined towards using Tomcat as the default choice for deploying audios. However as we introduced the https architecture where there was more load put on the gateways, we switched to the IIS model and I must say that it works very well and much eacsier to configure. I now use Tomcat only for certain audios and most of audios get deployed on IIS.
I had several issues with Tomcat caching on old CVP deployments. I do not see any of these now.
Hemal
From: Cisco Developer Community Forums [mailto:cdicuser@developer.cisco.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 11:09 PM
To: cdicuser@developer.cisco.com
Subject: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Discussion - All Versions: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Bill Webb has created a new message in the forum "General Discussion - All Versions":
--------------------------------------------------------------
Definitely the biggest "it depends" statement with CVP finishes with "on the architecture"...!
I am curious, though, of your big deployment. Was it with an older version? The largest ones I've been involved with were:
A deployment that started at CVP 4.1 and H.323, but was architected even slightly before that with a scalability number of I think 300 ports per server. The initial deployment was 32 servers - 16 per side - but that has since been cut in less than half and is probably still somewhat oversized based on actual usage numbers. That one did use a dedicated pair of Media Servers, one per side, and ran IIS because I recommended it, knowing it would be easier to configure! ;-)
And the other big one was similarly scaled, but was more recent (CVP 7) using SIP and architected around the 850 port/server limit at that time, so it was only 8 servers total (4 per side).
The point here is that my conviction with the architecture I described has grown with the product allowing that architecture to "fit" more often. At the current 1200 port/server limit (on standard hardware) or even the 900/instance on VM/UCS, I think it is safe to say that deployments with more than 4 CVP Servers *should* become fewer and further between. Ok, maybe "the cloud" concept will breathe new life into massive SP architectures and I'll be proven wrong, but when/if they do come around, they are of a scale that will easily absorb a load balancer or five and other "accessories" to make the whole thing work. Gateways seem to be in the same boat - the two examples above both used separate ingress and VXML gateways also, but I'm not sure the same systems designed today with new gateways would do the same again.
And yes - all good stuff all the way around, and why I frequent these forums more than most any others!!
- Bill
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Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Bill Webb on 13-04-2012 09:26:28 AM
Again, all great stuff, and I'm sure when I encounter a project that requires the use of HTTPS...or stumble upon the next 7,000 Agent (holy schneikies!!) UCCE deployment, I'll take a more measured approach to figure out the best solution! ;-) haha...
In all seriousness, I think that's why I love this industry - it's never the same place twice! ;-)
- Bill
Created by: paul jurkowski on 22-03-2012 10:28:10 AM
Hello-
First I'm a long way from being a developer, so that's my disclaimer. Here's my issue:
There was already an application set up for someone to call in, rercord a message and then this message would get played in one of our ICM scripts. What I have found is that the FTP root is set to only one of 4 media servers and that in the ICM script it was calling only that specific media server. So I basically followed suit and what I found is that the recorded wav file would upload but there would be different versions playing even though there is only 1 wav file on our media servers. For the sake of time right now, I won't get too deep into the architecture as I'm assuming it's getting cached on some of the VXML gateways. So I created a new, simple studio application and set it play the file directly in an audio step from the media server, so I have it set to play http://10.167.xx.xx/en-us/app/playmessage.wav playing the file directly which I thought would work. However, I'm getting the same results again. The correct message is playing only sometimes. Is it possible to play only this file from this specific location or is it something to do with the VXML caching files, etc.
My plan is to share all 4 media servers either by FTP or folder permissions but for the time being can I make this work or is it just not that simple?
thanks Paul
Subject: RE: New Message from paul jurkowski in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Genera
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 22-03-2012 10:44:17 AM
>>> as I'm assuming it's getting cached on some of the VXML gateways.
It certainly is.
Caching time (also called expiration time) is controlled by the web server. If you are using IIS, check Content Expiration time. This can be controlled at the folder level, and inheritance applies, but a sub-folder can override the parent.
You probably want these recordings to go into a special folder. You can set “Expire Immediately” on the folder and then no files will be saved in the http client cache on the gateway. Take care in doing this because it has a huge impact in performance and only apply it if that is absolutely necessary. Even a modest expiration time of 1 hour will be a vast improvement over “Expire Immediately”. You cannot just leave this blank, or the default on the cache will apply – that’s normally 10 days.
But if you want it to work immediately, you have no choice here – set “Expire Immediately” on the folder where the recordings are. If the recordings are mixed in with the other prompts for which caching is required, it ends up being very messy. So a dedicated folder/directory is my recommendation.
In a similar application I created a small FTP class to FTP the file to each of the media stores. There is a Cisco element available in CVP 8.5, but at the time I had to create a custom class.
By the way, there is NO really good reason to have 4 media stores. Just have 2 – one at the A side and 1 at the B side.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Bill Webb on 22-03-2012 10:56:43 AM
For the issue at hand, I'm not sure how you could be getting a different prompt playing in your sample app unless:
1. Some other app is overwriting the prompt unbeknownst to you!
2. The IP address is a VIP or is otherwise hitting a load balancer or something and actually sending you to a different server when the gateway cache expires.
I typically set up CVP as "combo boxes" whenever I possibly can, meaning Call Server and VXML Server on the same machine. This is really the Cisco standard at this point anyway. In that scenario, I've set up a recording app and a custom class/element on a 4-6 CVP Server deployment, each configured with FTP server. The recording element saves the new recording on whatever server that the call arrives on (pass in server's IP as session data to the app). Then the custom element uses pretty straightforward Java to get the current system's IP (or again pull it in from session data), and copies from the current server to all the other FTP servers, essentially creating a manual "synching" app.
I've tried some other 3rd party software that performs FTP synching, but I like having the control within the app, since you can see the results and proactively troubleshoot if problems occur in the FTP transfers or anywhere else.
- Bill
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Janine Graves on 22-03-2012 01:38:41 PM
Hi,
Note that Geoff is correct about setting the Expiry times on the Media Server, but that'll only take effect after audio URLs currently in the gateway cache expire!
If the audio URL is already cached on a vxml gateway and it hasn't expired yet, then the gateway doesn't bother to check with the media server to see if there's a newer version.
The VxmlGateway only checks for updates when the URL that's cached has expired (the age is greater than the FreshTime when you execute 'show http client cache') AND the audio is suppoed to be spoken to a caller in a VXML page.
So, even if the audio file is the same on your media servers, it may not have expired yet on one or more gateways, so you'll still hear the old audio.
To force the vxml gateway to check for a newer version of an audio URL, you can try these CLI commands
Option a) 'show http client cache' (look at the age of the audio you want to change)l then execute 'audio-prompt load <URL>' CAUTION - this always claims to be successful, even if it hasn't updated the cache because the audio file is in use). Then execute 'show http client cache' again and see if the age of the audio has gotten smaller - if so, good. If not, try the next option.
Option b) Use the CLI command 'set http client cache stale' - this sets everything to stale, there's no way to set one audio URL to stale. Thenfor each audio to be spoken, the gateway checks to see if the 'last modified date' on the media server is newer than what's in the cache. Only downloading audio with new 'last modified date'.
Janine
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: paul jurkowski on 22-03-2012 02:17:31 PM
Thanks everyone, this was extremely helpful.
Subject: Re: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 11:50:16 AM
Unless you absolutely need immediate exp'n, i wouldn't do that, but just.
Set it to a very low value (like 1 minute). I believe that if a file can't
be cached, then the gateway must retrieve it for each caller. But, if it is
in cache and has expired, then gateway does conditional get and checks
w/media server for updates, retrieving the audio only if it has newer
last-modified date. Much less bandwidth usage.
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Subject: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Discussion - All Versions: RE: App not playing recorded wav file
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Subject: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 27-03-2012 12:08:16 PM
Janine,
That would be good if it worked that way. Are you certain – have you watched debug on the http client cache to confirm?
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Gen
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 01:07:16 PM
Geoff,
I have seen the 304 response codes in the iis log. But, honestly, I havent
turned on debug and verified it. I am using the info from the white paper.
To the best of your knowledge, how does it work?
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Subject: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in
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Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: paul jurkowski on 27-03-2012 10:22:09 AM
So basically unless the cache is expiring the vxml gateway will not look for a new version of the audio file correct and it will be updated as each cache expires? I found out that our gateways are set to refresh at a certain time/length to accomdate for other applications so it looks like I'm kind of stuck. Unless, as Bill was saying, I can get the files to upload to all 4 media servers, but then again, if the file already exists, it won't look for a new version until the cache expires is what I'm understanding.
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Bill Webb on 27-03-2012 10:57:17 AM
The first part is correct, but if I'm understanding what you mention about "to accommodate for other applications", then you just need to do as Geoff mentioned - set up a separate folder for these more "dynamic" prompts, and set the expiration very low, if not immediate.
You can even set expiration on individual files/filenames, but it might be easier to modify the application to write the files to a separate subdirectory, and then you can set the expiration and any other parameters on that folder without impacting any other apps.
- Bill
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: paul jurkowski on 27-03-2012 11:10:04 AM
It's another 3rd party application that is also caching files on the vxml gateways. Not sure if that helps...
Subject: RE: App not playing recorded wav file consistently
Replied by: Bill Webb on 27-03-2012 11:11:00 AM
So to be more specific with an example, however generic:
Say your standard application audio files are in the directory:
.../audio/en-US/
On the web server, this folder may be set to expire in 60 minutes or whatever. What you would do is create a new directory named "Dynamic":
.../audio/en-US/Dynamic/
For that "Dynamic" subfolder, go into your web.xml or into IIS Admin and set the expiration on that specific folder to "Immediately Expire", or some small value, like 5 minutes. That now allows the files in just the "en-US" directory to maintain their 60 minute expiration, but anything pulled from the "Dynamic" subdirectory will have immediate expiration set in the header.
- Bill
Subject: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Gen
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 12:59:16 PM
No.
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Subject: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in
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Subject: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Replied by: Bill Webb on 27-03-2012 01:59:20 PM
I'm curious about this as well, because the way I believe it to work is that once the header indicates the content is expired, the file is downloaded again, regardless of the last changed time stamp.
Certainly it would be more intelligent if it operated the way you describe, and maybe that is the case - I've not done debugs either and don't currently have a system to test that with.
Can anybody else confirm or deny?
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: Hemal Mehta on 27-03-2012 04:24:16 PM
Janine,
Just to add. There is more logic to it.
When a audio file is first downloaded from HTTP server and HTTP header contains the message:
Cache-Control: max-age = < >
then this will be used to determine the stale time of the audio file. If this is not included then difference between expiration date and current date time is used to determine if the file is stale. If even this information is not present then fresh time is taken as 10% of the difference between last modified time and date. In case even this is not present in header we can assign it using :
http client cache refresh ( between 1-864000)
Also the conditional get applies to only non streaming mode.
Hemal
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Subject: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Discussion - All Versions: Re: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Janine Graves has created a new message in the forum "General Discussion - All Versions":
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The http cache whitepaper 'claims' the 'conditional get' with only
downloading 'if last modified date' is newer. Can anyone confirm?
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Subject: Re: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 08:28:16 PM
Hi Paul,
Does the vxml property 'audiomaxage' override this? That is, if a file in
cache is not yet stale but a file is to be spoken with the audiomaxage
property set to 1 (or 0), will that cause the gw to act as if the cached
version is 'stale'?
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Subject: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY
THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Subject: RE: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Replied by: Hemal Mehta on 27-03-2012 09:48:16 PM
Audio maxage vxml property has a higher preference and it overrides. I have verified this in the past.
Hemal
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Subject: New Message from Janine Graves in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Discussion - All Versions: Re: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Janine Graves has created a new message in the forum "General Discussion - All Versions":
max
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Paul,
Does the vxml property 'audiomaxage' override this? That is, if a file in
cache is not yet stale but a file is to be spoken with the audiomaxage
property set to 1 (or 0), will that cause the gw to act as if the cached
version is 'stale'?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
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Subject: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
General Discussion - All Versions: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY
THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
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Subject: Re: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Janine Graves on 27-03-2012 03:04:16 PM
The http cache whitepaper 'claims' the 'conditional get' with only
downloading 'if last modified date' is newer. Can anyone confirm?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
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Subject: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General
Discussion - All Versions: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in
Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Subject: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Replied by: Paul Tindall on 27-03-2012 08:03:56 PM
You may find the attachment of interest as it shows the refresh mechanism via extracts from traces.
The Cache-Control header max-age is the primary way to specify the time in cache before it will be refreshed. If you want to modify the Cache-Control header when using the CVP Tomcat instance for media file serving then check out the document here http://developer.cisco.com/documents/10501/2125796/Cache+Control+Tomcat.pdf
Subject: RE: Re: New Message from Paul Tindall in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - Gene
Replied by: Paul Tindall on 29-03-2012 09:13:53 PM
Janine,
Yes, that's correct, the fresh-time that's been set by the Cache-Control header won't be affected but the audiomaxage value you set will be tested against the current age in cache and a prompt refresh attempt will be made if age-in-cache > your audiomaxage value.
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 12-04-2012 11:35:05 PM
All good stuff, and we get an exchange of ideas which is what this forum is about. But there are always lots of environmental differences in play which make us choose different strategies. All I can ask is you think about it, and understand your options.
Of course, one of the killer reasons to use IIS is to make your microapps work. I’m a huge fan of microapps. Unlike young Bill. ;-)
I have some very big deployments that have many Call Servers, so if we had to distribute the media files to all CVP/VXML servers to put them under Tomcat the audio files would be on 20 servers. By nominating just two servers as Media Stores the distribution is controlled.
I do have some deployments where all servers are Call Servers/VXML servers and agree that simply using passing the Call.RoutingClient as the app_server ECC and setting this in the IP host table to ensure the VXML comes from the same server as the box managing the call is the easiest way to debug. Good plan.
In Studio, I set up the default audio path in the properties of the app Foobar to something like http://10.10.0.10/en-us/app/Foobar/ and my audio elements simply have the name of the wav file – even easier than Bill’s idea. Deploy to the multiple VXML servers on side A. Change the default audio path for the other side and deploy to all the VXML servers on side B.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: Re: New Message from GEOFFREY THOMPSON in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) -
Replied by: Bill Webb on 12-04-2012 09:26:58 PM
You may find the attachment of interest as it shows the refresh mechanism via extracts from traces.
The Cache-Control header max-age is the primary way to specify the time in cache before it will be refreshed. If you want to modify the Cache-Control header when using the CVP Tomcat instance for media file serving then check out the document here http://developer.cisco.com/documents/10501/2125796/Cache+Control+Tomcat.pdf
Somewhat off-topic here, but since there's plenty of interest and documentation around using the CVP VXML Server Tomcat instance as the Media Server, and IMHO there's all sorts of advantages to doing so, especially for a "retentive" guy like myself who thinks things like "why would I want to install an IIS instance on this server if I don't need to??"...I gotta ask again to this group since I have yet to receive an answer with any specific technical details:
Does anyone know why there is a caveat when running CVP on UCS in VMWare that you cannot use the Tomcat instance for a Media Server - instead, you must load an *additional* component with IIS??
Other than some possible multi-threading thing that Micro$oft has figured out better than the Apache Tomcat developers that is exploited in a VMWare setting, this makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Anyone have any insight on this? Paul?
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 12-04-2012 09:50:05 PM
I have no interest in using an application server such as Tomcat to deliver simple WAV files – IIS does this, and very nicely too. And probably it’s faster.
Expiration Lifetime is much easier to control in IIS. I have varying lifetimes depending on the directory and the purpose. Queue music may be 30 days – emergency messages may be 1 hour. And sometimes within a directory I want to control a new file individually. Much easier.
I like to whip up a little summary HTML page in the root of the Web server that indicates what locals and apps are running, and provide a links. With directory browsing turned on the reviewers can see the listing of wav files check (replay) any wav file from their browser. It’s a simple URL – just an IP address. The summary is the default document – hit the IP address in a URL and it’s displayed.
I often run the Media Stores through a load balancer like CSS – IIS is very slightly easier to configure.
Now I’ve been at this a long time, and Media Stores were there well before CVP VXML – so I’m a bit set in my ways, and I’ll give you that. But I can’t think of any GOOD reason to use Tomcat to deliver WAV files.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Bill Webb on 12-04-2012 11:16:10 PM
Fair enough, so let me offer what I think the good reasons are, with the following caveats/assumptions, because I'm also pretty set in my ways:
- All CVP Servers are combo Call Server/VXML Server/Media Server, because I don't like the distribution of individual components. Redundancy comes from multiple servers.
- All gateways are combo ingress/VXML, for same reasons noted above
- All interaction done with Studio apps (we established in that other thread that I'm no fan of microapps! ;-)
So with that said, a call comes into a gateway, and through dial-peers and a local SRV record finds a CVP Server (because I'm over H.323 and I don't see much of a need for SIP proxies - also another thread!).
ICM does the Send to VRU, and CVP uses Send to Originator to call bootstrap on the ingress gateway. ICM script uses Call.RoutingClient or the new ECC "cvp_server_info" to set hostname/IP of the CVP combo box that the gateway is already talking to - http://[hostname/IP]:7000/CVP - and calls first Run External Script.
In the Studio app, the default audio path is (by default) "/CVP/audio", which means if you use Tomcat, your audio path entries can just be "en-us/main_menu.wav". No need to pass in parameters to the app and do an Application Modifier to set another full URL string for an IIS media server - you simply change directories to get to the audio files, so all references can be relative paths.
I'll give you that IIS is a little easier to configure for expirations and such because it has a GUI tool, but I'll give that up any day for the convenience that Tomcat provides in simplifying my Studio apps, and to some extent, even my ICM scripting (or at least freeing up ECC space, since I don't have to pass in a media server URL as a parameter to my app.
The other piece from me comes before all of this, which is the fact that if I have a base Windows Server install, I run the CVP installer and I'm done - I have all the components I need. This might be where some more esoteric performance characteristics come into play somehow, which leads into that VM/UCS recommendation, but until proven otherwise, I look at like this - Tomcat is already running for VXML Server anyway, and using it to fetch audio from a subdirectory in between VXML fetches doesn't seem like it would cause a lot of additional load. On the other hand, loading IIS, even minimally, means at least a few more processes running on the server. Maybe this is akin to a Formula 1 tech shaving a control arm to save a few ounces, but hey, I get into that kinda stuff... ;-)
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Bill Webb on 13-04-2012 12:09:23 AM
Definitely the biggest "it depends" statement with CVP finishes with "on the architecture"...!
I am curious, though, of your big deployment. Was it with an older version? The largest ones I've been involved with were:
A deployment that started at CVP 4.1 and H.323, but was architected even slightly before that with a scalability number of I think 300 ports per server. The initial deployment was 32 servers - 16 per side - but that has since been cut in less than half and is probably still somewhat oversized based on actual usage numbers. That one did use a dedicated pair of Media Servers, one per side, and ran IIS because I recommended it, knowing it would be easier to configure! ;-)
And the other big one was similarly scaled, but was more recent (CVP 7) using SIP and architected around the 850 port/server limit at that time, so it was only 8 servers total (4 per side).
The point here is that my conviction with the architecture I described has grown with the product allowing that architecture to "fit" more often. At the current 1200 port/server limit (on standard hardware) or even the 900/instance on VM/UCS, I think it is safe to say that deployments with more than 4 CVP Servers *should* become fewer and further between. Ok, maybe "the cloud" concept will breathe new life into massive SP architectures and I'll be proven wrong, but when/if they do come around, they are of a scale that will easily absorb a load balancer or five and other "accessories" to make the whole thing work. Gateways seem to be in the same boat - the two examples above both used separate ingress and VXML gateways also, but I'm not sure the same systems designed today with new gateways would do the same again.
And yes - all good stuff all the way around, and why I frequent these forums more than most any others!!
- Bill
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: GEOFFREY THOMPSON on 13-04-2012 12:49:05 AM
The thing about the 1200 port limit for CVP Call Servers is misleading.
Let’s take a simple example, based on a deployment that has been through a few design cycles. 7000 agents, 5 minute calls, 1 minute ACW. So at full tilt, each agent can handle 10 calls an hour so a BHCA of 70,000.
If you plug this into the 8.6(2) Solution Sizing Tool with nominal transfers and agent greeting you need 994 CVP port licences and the tool requests 8 servers (MCS boxes not VMs) in N+1 redundancy with 90% utilization. You may be reluctant to run them that hard, so 10 servers may be more to your liking.
So 1200 ports per Call Server is not achieved.
Regards,
Geoff
Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Hemal Mehta on 13-04-2012 08:31:05 AM
Just to add. I was initially more inclined towards using Tomcat as the default choice for deploying audios. However as we introduced the https architecture where there was more load put on the gateways, we switched to the IIS model and I must say that it works very well and much eacsier to configure. I now use Tomcat only for certain audios and most of audios get deployed on IIS.
I had several issues with Tomcat caching on old CVP deployments. I do not see any of these now.
Hemal
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Subject: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Discussion - All Versions: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Bill Webb has created a new message in the forum "General Discussion - All Versions":
--------------------------------------------------------------
Definitely the biggest "it depends" statement with CVP finishes with "on the architecture"...!
I am curious, though, of your big deployment. Was it with an older version? The largest ones I've been involved with were:
A deployment that started at CVP 4.1 and H.323, but was architected even slightly before that with a scalability number of I think 300 ports per server. The initial deployment was 32 servers - 16 per side - but that has since been cut in less than half and is probably still somewhat oversized based on actual usage numbers. That one did use a dedicated pair of Media Servers, one per side, and ran IIS because I recommended it, knowing it would be easier to configure! ;-)
And the other big one was similarly scaled, but was more recent (CVP 7) using SIP and architected around the 850 port/server limit at that time, so it was only 8 servers total (4 per side).
The point here is that my conviction with the architecture I described has grown with the product allowing that architecture to "fit" more often. At the current 1200 port/server limit (on standard hardware) or even the 900/instance on VM/UCS, I think it is safe to say that deployments with more than 4 CVP Servers *should* become fewer and further between. Ok, maybe "the cloud" concept will breathe new life into massive SP architectures and I'll be proven wrong, but when/if they do come around, they are of a scale that will easily absorb a load balancer or five and other "accessories" to make the whole thing work. Gateways seem to be in the same boat - the two examples above both used separate ingress and VXML gateways also, but I'm not sure the same systems designed today with new gateways would do the same again.
And yes - all good stuff all the way around, and why I frequent these forums more than most any others!!
- Bill
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Subject: RE: New Message from Bill Webb in Customer Voice Portal (CVP) - General Dis
Replied by: Bill Webb on 13-04-2012 09:26:28 AM
Again, all great stuff, and I'm sure when I encounter a project that requires the use of HTTPS...or stumble upon the next 7,000 Agent (holy schneikies!!) UCCE deployment, I'll take a more measured approach to figure out the best solution! ;-) haha...
In all seriousness, I think that's why I love this industry - it's never the same place twice! ;-)
- Bill
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