Ask the Expert: Upgrading Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) to Version 9.1 (Drive to 9)

[ciscomoderator]

   

Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. Learn from experts Vijay Rao and Amit Singh about simplified upgrade process and focused support from Cisco to migrate to version 9.1. 

This is a continuation of the live Webcast

Drive to 9 is a comprehensive and holistic program designed to help you upgrade the current Cisco® Unified Communications Manager installed base to version 9.1 or higher. This upgrade will enable customers to have next-generation collaboration experiences.

During the live event, Cisco subject matter experts Vijay Rao and Amit Singh focussed on the simplified upgrade process and focused support from Cisco to migrate to version 9.1. They also talked about the changes made to the licensing model of User Connect Licensing and Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing.

Vijay Rao is a Network Consulting Engineer and is currently a unified communications (UC) consultant for Bank of America. He has been providing consulting assistance to the bank for the past 6 years. He helps design complex UC networks for large enterprise customers. He was previously part of Cisco IT in the Asia Pacific, Japan, and China (APJC) region and was instrumental in designing and implementing the Bangalore campus. He has been working with Cisco for 9 years and has 12 years of UC experience. He has a Cisco CCVP® certification. 

Amit Singh is a customer support engineer at the Cisco Technical Assistance Center in Bangalore, India. He has 7 years of experience in his areas of expertise: wireless, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, multiservices, Cisco Unity®, and Cisco Unified Contact Center Express. He has been involved in various escalation requests from India, Singapore, and Australia and is currently working as a technical lead for the Voice team in Bangalore, India. He is a computer science graduate.

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

Vijay and Amit might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Collaboration, Voice and Video sub-community   forum shortly after the event. This event lasts through July 19, 2013. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

Webcast related links:

• Webcast Video
• FAQ from the live webcast
• Slides from the live webcast

[amitsin]

Q: What happens if the CUCM 9.X license gets delayed due to contract issues? Would the call processing be affected?

Ans: Licensing timeline has been shortened with the efforts due to "Drive to 9" initiative.

Licensing team is ready to provide you licenses right away, you don't even need to generate a "License Migration Request" from ELM (Enterprise license Manager).

With 9.x CUCM and above we use ELM, and you get a 60 day Grace period to sort out any licensing issue or fix your ELM server.

Regards

Amit Singh

[amitsin]

Q: Is there an Android Tablet app similar to the iPad app?

Ans: Not at the moment.

In the meantime, you may use the Web-Based Tool :

http://tools.cisco.com/cucst/upgrade/inputs.jsp?reset=1

Regards

Amit Singh

[amitsin]

Q: Is CUCM 9.1 supported on bare metal MCS servers?

Ans: Yes, if you have a Supported H/w.

For future growth perspective, you may want to consider UCS boxes for Virtualization.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6790/ps5748/ps378/prod_brochure0900aecd8062a4f9.html

Regards

Amit Singh

[amitsin]

Q: Does upgrading to CUCM 9.1 involve a Refresh Upgrade (RU)?

Ans: From CUCM version 8.5 and below, we need to do a refresh upgrade, due to change the RHEL version from 4 to RHEL 5.

From 8.6 and above, its a L2 upgrade.

Regards

Amit Singh

[amitsin]

Q: What is the impact if I don’t rebuild the VM and install CUCM 9.1.2 after a “Jump Upgrade”?

Ans : You will get unsupported H/w warning, if the system was installed as 6.1.X or 7.1.X system.

Also, lot of unexpeted behaviour can be seen.

Regards

Amit Singh

[Marwan ALshawi]

Hi Gents,

I have couple of questions regarding licensing when upgrading to cucm 9

Case1

current CUCM is DLU based ( 6,7,8) installed on MCS 1000 DLUs

upgrade to CUCM 9 on UCS

how and what to be involved to upgrade the licensing assuming the customer has a valid CSS and ESW

is the license upgrade will be free or there is a cost ?

Case2

same as above case 1 but CSS/ESW is expired

Case3

same as case1 but they want to add additional 10 lobby and 50 video enabled IP phones

and what are the steps in each case to obtain the desired LIC type/amount

Thanks

[amitsin]

Hello,

Case 1 : If you already had DLU's in pre 9.x CUCM versions. The same will be translated to 9.x licensing.

              You may use the UCT (User Count Tool) to check how your DLU's will translate to 9.x license (UCL and           CUWL). UCT is available on CCO.

Case 2: If you had valid DLU's in pre 9.x, you will have no issues in getting them converted to 9.x based license.

Open a case with Licensing team, it will be sorted out right away.

Case 3: You can use the UCT tool, before the upgrade to 9.1.x and calculate your usage and requirement.

Whatever additional, licenses needed then can be purchased from Cisco.

For details, you may write to: licensing@cisco.com

regards

Amit Singh

[alferna]

Are all these upgrade procedures also valid when migrating/upgrading from CUCM to BE6K release 9.1?          

[amitsin]

Hello,

These upgrade procedures are ony valid for and conjuction with CUCM to CUCM upgrade.

Regards

Amit Singh

[amitsin]

Just to Add, for the licensing issues, you should be able to get same level of support.

regards

Amit Singh

[Zekeria Sammantar]

Hi,

Questions:

1. Does CUCM 9.1 Support ESXI Version 5.1

2. What are the new Vmware Features available for CUCM 9.1 in ESXI 5.1    

3. In the below link, Vmware ESXI 5 and above feature support were left blank, why?

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_VMware_Requirements

4.When upgrading to major ESXI release like 4.0 to 5.0, are there any changes need to be made to CUCM

5.When upgrading to minor ESXI release like 5.0 to 5.1, are there any changes need to be made to CUCM

Thanks.

[amitsin]

Hello Zekeria,

Ans 1 : As VMWare ESXi 5.1, just provides the Virtalized environment, there should not be any issues in using ESX5.1 for CUCM 9.1.

Ans 2 : From the perspective of VMware features, it remains the same, as mentioned in the document you shared the link for.

Ans 3 :  Its Empty becaue "Blanks indicate not tested or info is not available at this time"

Ans 4 : Nothing needs to be done on CUCM, just make sure you have a DRS backup, for just in case scenarios.

Ans 5 : No change needed on CUCM

Regards

Amit Singh

[Rob Huffman]

Hey Amit,

Sorry to bother you here, but I've been away and haven't

had a chance to go through all the docs, vids etc.

Quick Q - how long is Drive to 9 promo on for?? (like until August 15 or November 1,2013??)

Cheers! and thanks!

Rob

"I don't know how, I don't know when
But you and I will meet again " 

- Tom Petty

[amitsin]

Hello Rob,

No worries, glad to answer any queries.

Drive to 9 is an ongoing effort and no end date defined as if now.

We still have a large deployment base on 6.x/7.x/8.x.

All the support structure, will be still in place for quite some time.

If I will get to know any specific date, i will update my Drive to 9 Blog.

Regards

Amit Singh

[Rafig Yolchuyev]

Hello Experts,

My question is  so that I'm planning to upgrade my  CUCM 7.1.5  to  9.1  on test environment  but no success,  when I  complere the  new installation of  cucm 7.1.5  - and restrore the  data from backup  I'm getting the physical error,

I tried to do in 2 ways,  first  tried to  restore the system on VmWare   no success and then decided to restore  everything on  physical  on evironment on MCS  servers.

What am I doing wrong ?