Solved: CUCM 8.6.2 upgrade to CUCM 10.5

Cristian Boboc · ‎09-30-2014

Hi,

I have to upgrade a virtualized CUCM cluster (PUB, SUB1, SUB2, TFTP) version 8.6.2 SU3 to version 10.5.

As per documentation this should be a direct refresh upgrade and no need of PCD to do it.

Based on the documentation the main steps of the upgrade are:

-changing the OS to RHEL 6 (64-bit) and the Network Adapter from "Flexible" to "VMXNET 3” for the VM (shut down the VM and perform the changes)

-run ciscocm.version3-keys.cop.sgn.

-run ciscocm.free_common_space_v1.1.cop.sgn

-run the 10.5 ugrade file in following order: PUB, TFTP, SUB1, SUB2

The existing 8.6.2 OVA, 7500 users is using 2 vCPU and 80GB for each vdisk (total of 160GB).

The 10.5 OVA, 7500 users requires 1 vCPU and 110GB for the vdisk.

Does anybody know if I have to run the ciscocm.free_common_space_v1.1.cop.sgn to increase the space to 110GB on each vdisk (even if the total size is 160GB on 2 vdisks which is more then 110GB required on 10.5 OVA)?

Cisco engineer said that this is not possible as well that I can not change the OS to RHEL 6 (64-bit) on the existing server/VM (ESXi 4.1 U3.

He recommends to create a new VM using the new OVA and use the DRS and restore process for performing the upgrade.

Any input/advise will be appreciated!

Thanks.

Ayodeji Okanlawon · ‎10-09-2014

The success to any upgrade is planning. The customer type bank or not doesn't not really matter. What is crucial is your willingness to do due diligence to make this as smooth as possible..

Here are the things you need to do in the order described

1. Read your documentation. Very crucial. CUCM10.5 is a major change on all others.

You need to start by reviewing the upgrade guide, release notes, and new and changed documentation for all the steps and considerations you need to take into account for this upgrade.

NB: The upgrade guide for IM and P is merged with that of CUCM and here is the link for it..

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/upgrade/10_0_1/CUCM_BK_U4214F9D_00_upgrade-guide-cucm-100.html

Release notes found here:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/rel_notes/10_5_1/CUCM_BK_CE15D2A0_00_cucm-release-notes-1051.html

2. Plan for your license migration. Usually this involves two steps

a. Use cisco LCU (license count utility tool) to generate license report on your existing cluster. This can be downloaded from cco.filename is LCUZIP-Ver9.1.2.zip

Ensure that you install any unsed DLU and license PAKS on your cluster before you run this..

b. Next email this file obtained from lcu (this is a csv file) tool cisco licensing team licensing@cisco.com. This will confirm that your service contracts is in order prior to requesting new licenses for 10.5

c. Login in Prime License Manager after successfully migrated from 8.6 to 10.5

Use the following procedure to generate a license request.

Log in to Cisco Prime License Manager.
From the Licenses > Fulfillment page, select Generate License Request from the drop-down list under
Other Fulfillment Options.
The License Request and Next Steps window appears. Copy the selected text to your clipboard or click save it to a file on your PC and send to licensing@cisco.com to get permanent licenses

3. Document the steps you will use for the upgrades. You can send a draft here and I will be happy to review this with you.

Ensure that you write down step by step what you will do on the day. The upgrade guide should be used to write down what you will do on the day. This is a very long upgrade, hence you need to document in detail what you will be doing.

4. Contact the relevant team to get your ESW/UCSS contract numbers. You need this to login to PUT to download your media. I was doing an upgrade recently and realised that the customers ESW contract has expired..So this is crucial.

Upgrade tasks

PCD is your best bet. Install PCD on your Esxi host. Just create a new VM for it. It makes things much easier for you..If you don't have spare capacity to create new VM then do it manually

5. Before you begin..Take a back up of your cluster.

6. VM machine sizing.

Please refer to cucm10.5 ova readme file, found on CCO. Depending on the OVA template you used for your cucm8.6, you may need to change the vm setings prior to upgrade. This is because the disk size and cpu requirements is different for cucm10.5 on some ova templates.

6a. You will need to change the vm adapter settings on your VM. This is documented in the cucm10.5 ova. Your best option is to use esxi powercli. You can download this from VMware website provided you have a valid service contract.

6b. You will need to change your guest operating system to RHEL6. This is also documented in the 10. 5 OVA

7. If your 8.6 cluster is running on VM at the moment, then just do a direct upgrade to 10.5.

NB: before you upgrade you will need to install the ff cop file on all the servers in the cluster

ciscocm.version3-keys.cop.sgn

After this upgrade your cluster starting with cucm. The upgrade guide will tell you the order of the upgrade..

7. Once upgrade is completed, perform the post upgrade tasks.

8. Develop a detailed test plan. Ensure all critical component of your customer is covered in the test plan. Test features that are critical to them

9. Finally, ensure your CV is updated. In case you need to look for another job if everything breaks: (lol)

Answer to your questions:

"As per what I see, an easy option would be to create a new virtual machine and use a DRS? but, would it work if I create the DRS on CUCM 8.6 and use it on 10.5?"

---You may create a new VM or adjust VM settings as I already discussed. If you want to create a new VM, then you will create VM with cucm10.5 ova, install cucm 10.5 on it.

You will then upgrade your current 8.6 to 10.5, take a DRS back up and go and do a DRS restore on the new 10.5 you have installed on the new VM. You cant restore 8.6 to 10.5.

"What happens to presence server? I understand I have to upgrade it too but, will the configuration be transferred to CUCM 10.5 (I mean, services associated with the menus that originally were on presence 8.6)?"

---Yes IM and P needs to match the cucm version. Yes the configuration will be transferred. You don't need to do anything. Please read the upgrade guide carefully.

"If all of the apps are on 8.6, do we need to upgrade everything to 10.5 at the same window?"

---For CUCM and IM and P, yes you have to upgrade them at the same time. The versions must match. It is advisable that you have unity connection on same version too, but not critical. I believe 8.6 unity connection will work with cucm10.5 ( I haven't checked this, so confirm it yourself)

The upgrade is a refresh upgrade. So it does take a long time and there are several reboots. The publisher is the one that takes the longest amount of time. The subscriber is about half the time it takes for the Pub to upgrade. You should be fine with a weekend maintenance widow. Friday evening to Sunday.

"If upgrade fails, can I still go back to 8.6?" Yes as long as you do not use the "free common space cop file" This is discussed in the upgrade guide as well.

It looks daunting, but if you do your home work, you will be fine and we are here to help and assist you all the way

Please refer to this thread for similar discussions:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12319616/vm-upgrade-cucm-86-105-question

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View solution in original post

Ayodeji Okanlawon · ‎09-30-2014

Last week I did an upgrade to CUCM 10.5 using PCD. I am not sure what you mean by no need for PCD to do it. PCD is a great tool and it can make your life a lot easier if you do your home work very well and by your home work I mean do your pre-upgrade tasks as documented by cisco.

One down side to PCD is that you don't know what is going on unlike the manual upgrade where you can see logs and can see if a failure happens why it failed etc.

My upgrade kept failing and I had to assume control (take over PCD) upgrade to see what the error was and the error was common space partition issue..(once I corrected this, my upgrade went smoothly)

Back to your questions..

First thing to note is this, the free common space cop file has a big downside. It wipes out your inactive partition. SO essentially you will have nothing to fall back to if anything goes wrong with your upgrade other than to do a DRS. So this should be a last resort. Here is a short note from the read me file..

Important Note: This COP file does not install anything on the node. It just runs a script that removes the inactive side in the common partition to free up the disk space so that upgrade is successfully completed. You will not be able to switch back to the inactive version after installing this patch.

Important Note: If the disk space in the common partition is less than 25 GB, the files in the common partition will be removed.

What you should do, which is what I did is to use RTMT to free up space in your common partition and to also adjust your "loglevellowwatermark and highwatermarklevel" This is what cisco's upgrade guide recommends..

Use the Cisco Log Partition Monitoring Tool to adjust the low and high watermarks to reduce the traces and remove unnecessary log files. Cisco recommends that you adjust the low watermark value to 30, and the high watermark value to 40. After the upgrade, you must restore the high and low watermarks to their original values in order to avoid premature purging of traces. The default value for the high watermark is 85. The default value for the low watermark is 80.

If I were you, I will use this opportunity to upgrade my esxi host as well and eploy new OVA and then do DRS as suggested by TAC. This way are not doing much fiddling and you can get your servers up and running with the best specs..

I must also add "refresh upgrade are service impacting" There will be lots of server reboots etc and it takes a long time. So plan accordingly

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Cristian Boboc · ‎09-30-2014

Thank you for your answer Ayodeji,

The problem I face is that I do not have enough resources on the UCS servers to deploy the PCD and to create additional VMs to use for upgrade.

Based on this the only option I see is to do a manual upgrade which is an option as per the documentation.

Did anybody run the ciscocm.free_common_space_v1.1.cop.sgn? Any impact on the system?

Thanks

Ayodeji Okanlawon · ‎10-01-2014

Just add to my earlier post, I can confirm that you can run RHEL 6 (64-bit) on the existing server/VM (ESXi 4.1 U3.) I am running 4.1.0 on one of my host vms and I am able to change the OS to RHEL 6(64bit)

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Daniel Gomez · ‎10-09-2014

Hello guys,

I'm facing the same issue.

My customer wants to upgrade from CUCM/Presence/Unity Connection 8.6 to 10.5.

Honestly, this is the first time I'm going to do a major upgrade and I'm very worried about it, specially because the customer is a bank.

1. I've been looking for information but I'm very confused. If customer doesn't have Prime Collaboration, then, can't I upgrade manually?

2. As per what I see, an easy option would be to create a new virtual machine and use a DRS? but, would it work if I create the DRS on CUCM 8.6 and use it on 10.5?

3. What happens to presence server? I understand I have to upgrade it too but, will the configuration be transferred to CUCM 10.5 (I mean, services associated with the menus that originally were on presence 8.6)?

4. If all of the apps are on 8.6, do we need to upgrade everything to 10.5 at the same window? I mean, I was reading that a server can take up to 4 hours to complete the upgrade process, we have:

CUCM: 1 pub and 3 subs

Presence: 1 server

Unity Connection: primary and secondary server

CUCM SME: 1 pub and 1 sub.

We need to schedule a maintenance window but, if everything has to be done at once it will be a huge window!

5. If upgrade fails, can I still go back to 8.6?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Regards,

Aman Soi · ‎10-09-2014

Hi,

if u are doing major upgrade , then u would have ordered for CUCM 10 through PUT and u would have received PCD media.

secondly, backups are platform independent.

regds,

aman

Irshad Mohammed Hussain · ‎10-11-2014

Thanks to Ayodeji Okanlawon and Aman,

I still have some doubts please clarify , I have a Customer using 8.6.2 in Virtulized environment, the initial deployment of 8.6.2 was not done by using ova's, so if i do refresh upgrade, i think it will result into "ERROR-UNSUPPORTED" Partition Unaligned....

The Question is can i deploy new 10.x Ova's for CUCM-PUB,CUCM-SUB1,CUCM-SUB2 and CUP-SUB and use PCD to do migration from Old Cluster to New Cluster with same IP Address and Host names, is Customer eligible to have new Images of 10.x or he will get only upgrade images which can't be used to migrate?

If i am doing migration by deploying ISO images in Fresh_install directory of PCD, can i use the same upgrade images which i downloaded using PUT for upgrade.

The customer has all UCSS Contract and ESW Contract

Aman Soi · ‎10-11-2014

Hi Mohammed,

Are u referring to Bootable images of CUCM 10.sgn.iso which get installed in fresh_install[SFTP datastore of PCD]? the same u would have downloaded from Cisco after placing order through PUT

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/unified-communications/unified-communications-manager-callmanager/118318-config-cucm-00.html

regds,

aman

Irshad Mohammed Hussain · ‎10-11-2014

Thanks Aman.......... Yes i am referring Bootable images of CUCM 10.sgn.iso

Q) If customer orders using PUT is he eligible to download fresh Install ISO images for CUCM, CUC and IM?

and how about license migration ?

Thanks

Aman Soi · ‎10-11-2014

Yes, you would get the bootable images. For licenses, u run LCU tool. Which is downloadable from cisco.prior to migration , run this tool from a PC from which publisher is reachable. You would get csv file which needs to be shared witk licensing @cisco.com along with PLM .PLM u would get after successful migration of call manager from 8 to 10 Regds, Aman After

Irshad Mohammed Hussain · ‎10-11-2014

Thanks Aman +5

Aman Soi · ‎10-11-2014

Hi Mohammad,

Please attached the snapshot when ordered through PUT when opted for E-delivery and is available for download.

regds,

aman

bkhanal1971 · ‎10-20-2014

All the information above are of tremendous value to me as i am going to do the upgrade of cucm 8.6 to 10.5 so my +5 to you all. I have two questions as I go through the upgrade guide.

1. Under the section "refresh upgrade of cucm nodes only..." it says switch version in pub after the upgrade and before starting upgrading subscribers. However, in another section called 'parallel upgrade' in the same document, it says upgrade all the nodes before switching versions. It has confused me. I want to upgrade only the CUCM nodes this time. Only application I have running is CUC that i will upgrade at another time.

2. I have 28 GB free space in common partition in pub and way more in the subs. My old OVA template is for 7500 users (2 vCPU,6 GB RAM, 2x80gb vDisk). Should I still need to increase the disk size from existing 80 gb? If so how?

Thank you, Khanal

Ayodeji Okanlawon · ‎11-25-2014

Bkanal,

Have you done your upgrade yet? Which order did you switch your servers? There seem to be conflicting information about the other of this for a refresh upgrade..

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gabiulici · ‎11-27-2014

Hii,

I have the same question with the existing 8.6.2 OVA, 7500 users is using 2 vCPU and 80GB for each vdisk (total of 160GB), can I power off the virtual machine and increase the storage and change the Os to RH 6 64x.

I have 2 UCS wit 1 Pub/ 1 Sub /1 Voicemal.

I will deploy a Ova10.5 and install the 10.5 iso on the machine. My question is if I can restore the back-up from Cucm8.6 to new machine 10.5 and power off the 8.6 and then change the ip and dns on the new machine.