CUCM 8.5 about licensing and some more q?

[DejanMilicevic]

We are getting into a new project implementing  CUCM 8.5 cluster with a large number of phones? The phones we are considering  are 7965,7962,7942 and 6921. We will have few SIP trunks. I was thinking to try  everything in the lab environment and I have few questions if someone can help.  So I was planning to use VMware for two CUCM 8.5 in the cluster and attach a few  Cisco phones mentioned above and create SIP trunk to some GSM gateway and  another IP PBX. I read somewhere that CUCM 8.5 comes with 150 demo licenses  (need to be activated after installation). What does it means? Can I attach any  Cisco phone? What do I need voice router if the SIP trunks are on the same  codec?

If I use two physical servers to configure  cluster are there also demo licenses or just in the VMware environment?

And in general what are the licensing methods in  the 8.X CUCM? Thanks in advance.

[Jonathan Schulenberg]

You can generate demo licenses for CUCM. Until version 9.0 this was a set quantity of DLUs (each phone model consumes some quantity of DLUs) as well as a few node licenses to build a cluster. SIP trunks are not licensed features nor are codecs.

As for general licensing education: DLUs are a depracated per-device licensing model that you can no longer purchase. Starting in CUCM 9.0 the product will track the per-user licensing models now being sold: User Connect (UCL) and User Workspace (UWL) licensing. Think of UCL as buying MS Word while UWL is MS Office: the former is a single product such as CUCM while the later is a suite of products such as CUCM, IM&P, Unity Connection, etc.

If you're not familiar with the licensing programs I suggest you build your lab using CUCM 9.0. The new Enterprise License Manager tool (co-resident with the CUCM Publisher install) will allow you to very clearly understand how the licenses, demo or real, are being consumed.

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[DejanMilicevic]

Hi Jonathan. Thanks for the explanation. The problem is that the company management wants stable CUCM version so  we got 8.5 image from the seller to try in our lab till the equipment arrive. So the in that case I need licenses for cluster right? and what is difference between physical and VMware environment. Can I use demo licenses for all Cisco phones in both cases or not?