Cisco Telephony Environment Upgrade

[PNI-ITRNP]

Here is what I would like to do:

Upgrade CUCM Including UCCX, Unity, Emergency Responder, and MediaSense to the latest version. Currently these systems are virtuals machines running on Cisco UCS servers.

My plan is the following, please correct me if I am wrong here in any of my plans:

Purchase new Cisco UCS Servers that support the Cisco Telephony environment to version 11 (Current systems do not).  Install Cisco Telephony Virtuals servers on new UCS Servers with version 9. This environment will be isolated with identical IP addressing scheme, DNS, NTP, FTP and SFTP servers.

Upgrade current environment to version 9, currently running v8.6.

DRS Backup on old environment, import backup into new environment.

In an isolated environment, I should now have an identical Cisco Telephony environment. If I take a production phone and plug into the isolated network I am assuming because everything is identical the phone should register and I should be able to test extension to extension dialing and voicemail.

Would this work?

Thank you for any knowledgeable feedback.

[Jaime Valencia · Accepted solution]

Yes, if you do not change any of the config but just DRS as it is, you'd have an exact replica in your lab.

[PNI-ITRNP]

Thank you for the quick response. I wanted to make sure I was thinking straight or that I was not missing anything. Are there any gotchas I should be aware of in performing such a procedure. Specifically, since I am planning to upgrade so many parts to the Telephony environment.

I plan on starting the upgrade with CUCM, and doing each system as the previous is verified and tested. Should my upgrade time table be longer? For example, do CUCM and wait a few days to verify things are working? Or would upgrading most parts during a very long evening be ok?

Also, I haven’t checked yet, but what are the odds I would need to update Phone FW?

Thanks again for knowledgeable feedback.

[Jaime Valencia]

In a working environment, you have to worry about keeping compatibility between everything and many times UCCX is a pain point because of that, which makes upgrades longer.

As you're doing this in a lab you can attempt to do the shortest path possible and make sure that everything is working once you're in the target release, it's really up to you as this will not affect your production environment.

[PNI-ITRNP]

Thanks guys for the information.

I think this will work pretty good, and I'm feeling confident about it now (not cocky, but confident - :) ).

I'll post back when this is complete to let you know how it went.

Thanks.

[seanvaid]

I don't see a reason to wait and verify in the lab. I would just get everything done and then tested.

This way would be significantly quicker, and also allow you to test all the products to make sure they work well with each other.