Replacing Call Manager hardware..

[robnorton]

Hello,

Is it possible to aimply replace Call Manager and/or unity hardware by pulling the disks from the old hardware (if it were to go faulty for example), and putting them into another box with identical hardware specs?

Many thanks,

Rob

[William Bell]

The answer is the nebulous: "it depends".

If the hardware specs are truly identical then you shouldn't have a problem booting the drives, loading UCOS, and getting the system online. If there are differences, especially if there are more or less CPU cores, then you may have issues on boot.

In all cases, you will need to re-host the license because the MAC address will change.

I have done hardware swaps like this but I think that last time was on a 6.x system. So, there is a little room for a 2nd opinion here.

HTH

-Bill (http://ucguerrilla.com)

[Jaime Valencia]

The official answer to that is, no

Removing Hard Drives

Cisco only supports replacing failed hard drives. Cisco does not support drive pulling/swapping as a method of fast upgrade reversion, restore, or server recovery. For information on replacing a failed hard drive, refer to the Troubleshooting Guide for Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

HTH

java

if this helps, please rate

www.cisco.com/go/pdihelpdesk

[Roger Kallberg]

Even if Cisco doesn't support the use of pulling out hard drives it has become more or less de-facto standard to do just that before any major upgrade of nodes in a UC system. That is at least my experience, I seen this done by many peers and have also used this approach my self many times. On a few occasions, once or twice, I have seen hardware problems with the hard drive after this, but out of all times doing this it's a very remote chance of that happening.

I have also had an entire MCS servers replaces by Cisco or just the motherboard, in both these cases we pulled the hard drives out of the faulty server and plugged them in to the replacement. This of coerce requires the license to be rehosted.

Please rate all useful posts.

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[robnorton]

Thanks all, that is very helpful

[robnorton]

One last question, we are still running v7.0 - Will Cisco licensing still re-host a license for this version? I believe cannot take out a new support contract for this as it is end-of-life?

[William Bell]

Robert,

Correct, you cannot take out a new support contract on application software. However, if your system is covered by a valid support contract then you should be fine. Based on the EoL notice the last day of software support (app) is for April 2013.

If you are not under a valid support contract then you may run into an issue and you should probably talk to your Cisco or partner AM.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6788/vcallcon/ps556/end_of_life_notice_c51-563779.html

HTH

-Bill (http://ucguerrilla.com)

[robnorton]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the quick reply, although I am a little confused where that leaves me

I think you are right, I will need to contact Cisco to find out whether they will allow me to re-host my licenses in the event of failure.

Thanks,

Rob