Upgrade procedure from CUCM 4.x to 8.5

[huntlee]

Dear Netpro gurus,

Would anyone be able to shed some light on where I can find some documentation / notes on how to upgrade existing CallManager 4.1 to 8.5??

Would greatly appreciated if anyone can help on this  =)

Cheers,

Hunt

[Roman Rodichev]

first, couple of questions

1. will you be running 8.5 on bare metal MCS server or virtualized on a UCS server?

2. if MCS, do you know if your server supports 8.5 (probably not)? what model do you have?

3. do you have licenses for cm 8.5?

4. do you have installation media for cm 7.x and cm 8.5? you'll need both

[huntlee]

Hi Roman,

In response to your questions:-

1.     Will be virtualized running on brand new UCS-C200M2-VCD2

2.     N / A

3.     Client has bought CUCM-USR-LIC

4.     Not sure if i have these.  What particular Cisco Part code should I be looking for??

Cheers,

Hunt

[Amer rajai Sha'er]

Hello,

Excelent questions from Roman, espeically the last one , you have to had the the 7.1.5 CD because there is no way to upgrade from 4 to 8.5 directly , you can upgrade from 4.X to maximum 7.1.5 using the DMA , then you can upgrade to 8.5

There is no worries for the license of the 7.1.5 since you will gain them for free from the DMA and 7.1.5 can be installed on VMware.

so what exactly you should do is :

1- go to cisco website and download the DMA tool for CUCM 7.1.5

2- install it only on the publisher of CUCM 4.X (make sure that the 4.X is supported because as far as i remember there are a couple of version that are not suppprted for upgrade).

3- run the DMA tool , i am sure you will have some problems , fix them.

4- when you finish with the DMA , you will get a file called XXX.lic , open it , copy the content and paste it on the licenseing web-site , there is a link there for the CUCM migration , you will get by email all the device licesne plus the server license for free.

5- run the installation of the 7.1.5 , one step is going to ask you if you upgrading using DMA , choose yes , place the file you generated from DMA under FTP or SFTP server because those are the only ways you can get the file from.

6- when you finish the upgrade ,you will check that the system has all the config exactly like 4.X

7- upload the license files nd then restartthe CUCM version (you should have now a fully operation 7.1.5)

8- upload the 8.5 SW feature license and do a normal upgrade using the install/upgrade from the OS to 8.5

hope this is clear.

Amer

[Roman Rodichev]

Amer, as far as I know, even though you can install CM 7.1 on a VM, it's not the official upgrade path that Cisco supports. If he runs into any issues he won't get help from TAC. Instead, CM 7.1 needs to be installed on an MCS server, and then upgraded to 8.5. And then he takes a DRS backup, installs 8.5 on a VM, and does a DRS restore. The issue here is that his servers are probably too old for 7.1, so the only way is to loan an MCS server from his local Cisco office. This is the official upgrade path that he should follow according to TAC.

Few notes:

- make sure to install latest Windows OS and CM 4.1 patches downloadable from CCO

- keep in mind that CM 8.5 licenses on a VM use a license MAC and not a hardware MAC. Once you get to CM 8.5, you will need to have Cisco's licensing team rehost your licenses to a license MAC

- make sure to use Cisco's OVA templates for VM creation

- you probably don't have CM 7.1 installation media. You can either get it from your local Cisco office or beg TAC for it Another alternative is to download non-bootable 7.1 ISO's from CCO and turn them into bootable (http://htluo.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-to-make-non-bootable-iso-image.html) This trick might not work for other UC apps.

- to become familiar with CM 5.x> installation process you can watch my video here: www.iementor.com/cucm

- if you have CRS/UCCX in your environment, let us know as it involves more things you need to do

Some important links:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/prod_installation_guides_list.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6790/ps5748/ps378/prod_brochure0900aecd8062a4f9.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/compat/ccmcompmatr.html

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_Virtualization

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/License_MAC_Generation

http://www.cisco.com/web/cuc_afg/index.html

Roman

[Amer rajai Sha'er]

Roman,

Excelent point but  there is nothing to fear about since this going to be in a off network , this is a new hardware and he can do the installation million times .

Amer

[kbrinker]

Hunt,

I am in a similar situation where my customer wants to upgrade from a 4.X version of CallManager to a 8.X version on Communications Manager on a customer-supplied VMware server.  Has the advice supplied in this discussion worked out well for you?  Could please provide details as to the steps you took for the upgrade and any problems that you encountered? I am especially curious as to whether you used an interim MCS server or upgraded directly to the VMware server as Amer has suggested.

Thanx for the help,

Karl