Power save plus in CME. How to exclude certain phones from powering down.

[adventurer]

There doesn't seem to be much discussion around power save plus. Really wondering how many people actually use it.

Anyway, I'm playing around with power save plus config. It works brilliantly, but I can't figure out how to exclude certain phones from powering down.

Example, phones power down at 6pm, up at 8am.

telephony-service

 service phone enablePowerSavePlus 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
 service phone phoneOnTime 08:00
 service phone phoneOffIdleTimeout 20
 service phone phoneOffTime 18:00

With this config, all phones will power down at 6pm. But there are certain phones like security or night operations that has be running all night.

I have been looking around voice register template, voice register pool, etc, but couldn't find anywhere to override the setting put into telephone-service.

[Mohammed al Baqari · Accepted solution]

You can't do this per-phone for SIP. You can do it only per SCCP. If all your phones are SIP, the only way I can think about it to disable for couple of phones is as following:

1. Download the XML files for all phones to offsite

2. Delete the section below for phones without PowerSavePlus

<vendorConfig>
<enablePowerSavePlus>1,2,3,4,5,6,7</enablePowerSavePlus>
<phoneOnTime>08:00</phoneOnTime>
<phoneOffIdleTimeout>20</phoneOffIdleTimeout>
<phoneOffTime>18:00</phoneOffTime>
</vendorConfig>

3. Save the XML file and upload all files to CME flash (you can create a directory for config files in the flash)

4. Disable the command 'create profile' under your 'voice register global'

5. Configure tftp-server alias mapping to point the config files to their location in flash. 

In this case, your phones will use the files in flash which has powersave enabled expect the ones you disabled.

Another approach to utilize this feature is to use Energywise on your switch instead of PowerSavePlus. With Energwise on the switch, you can exclude some phones as the schedule is applied per port. Also, it has SNMP MIBs which you can use in your monitoring to see the amount of saved energy. I used it and its very powerful. 

[adventurer]

Thanks for the reply.

It's really sad after so many years Cisco still have to make a mess between SIP and SCCP.

Option 1. Manually create xml file. This method is very unmanageable.

Option 2: Use Energywise on the switch. So far from the documentation that I read, there is limitation users cannot press the lighted button on the phone to wake it up. Is there a fix for this ? I really cannot tell the users after 6pm there's no way to use the phone without IT intervention.

[Mohammed al Baqari]

Agreed with you on option 1. For option 2, energywise can't do this because its based on the switch not CUCM. Its operation isn't relevant to the type of PoE device connected (Phone, AP, Fax ATA, etc)

[adventurer]

I have flashed a 8945 back to SCCP and tested it with a invalid setting, example,

ephone-template  3

service phone enablePowerSavePlus 0

This will override the setting telephony-service.

Looks like this is the best solution for my case, flash some phones back to SCCP.

Such a limitation in SIP.

[Mohammed al Baqari]

If you have that option then its the way to go. Good that your problem fixed.