upgrade Unity

[jjoseph01]

Guys, sorry about this, but Im unclear on this as well. Im looking at upgrading Unity 4.0. I want to know what the furtherest version of Unity I can go with Win 2000 is and what version wont work with Win 2000?

[Rob Huffman · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

Here are clips from the support docs for the two latest Unity versions 4.2 and 5.x;

Unity 5.x

Software Requirements?Cisco Unity Server

A supported 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server:

Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition (not supported when Exchange 2000 Server is the message store

Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition (not supported when Exchange 2000 Server is the message store)

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (not supported when Exchange 2000 Server is the message store)

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (not supported when Exchange 2000 Server is the message store)

Windows 2000 Server

Windows 2000 Advanced Server

These Windows versions are supported in English, French, German, and Japanese

Unity 4.2

Software Requirements?Cisco Unity Server

A supported version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server:

Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition (requires Exchange Server 2003 as the message store)

Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition (requires Exchange Server 2003 as the message store)

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (requires Exchange Server 2003 as the message store)

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (requires Exchange Server 2003 as the message store)

Windows 2000 Server

Windows 2000 Advanced Server

These Windows versions are supported in English, French, German, and Japanese.

Cisco Unity is not qualified for use on Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

Hope this helps!

Rob

[thisisshanky]

To add to Rob's excellent post, you need a min of 2 gb ram on the Unity server. Some of the older HP/IBM servers are not supported ("officially by tac").

Also when converting to 5.0 (a lot of nice features are there in it), you will need to work with Cisco licensing team to convert your licenses to one that the 5.0 Unity server will accept.

I will also suggest you look at Unity CM TSP compatibility list to see if your Unity version supports the right TSP version with the Callmanager version you are currently running.

Just a few things you would probably overlook during a Unity upgrade.

[jjoseph01]

Another question concerning this, if you guys will, Im wondering if I have a Unity sitting on Win 2000 and CM on 2003, will there be any compatibility issues with this?

[thisisshanky]

You should not have any incompatibility because of OS being diff on each box. You will need to only worry about the Unity version and Callmanager version and see if a compatible TSP is available. This link helps in determining this.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/unity/compatibility/matrix/cutspmtx.html

So if you are moving to 5.0 and your CM version to 4.3, the min. TSP required is 8.2.1

[jjoseph01]

Thanks ALL! I appreciate it.

[jjoseph01]

Does that go both ways? CM upgrading and support of Unity?

[thisisshanky]

Yes its vice versa. All you got to do always is check the compatibility list that i posted earlier.

[jjoseph01]

Thanks all!

[Russell La Plante]

I recently upgraded from Unity 4.2 to 5.0(1). The upgrade went fine. A couple of notes (that may not be so clear in Cisco's EXCELLENT documentation...sarcasm completely intended)

1. The great new feature of voice-recognition only supports the g711 codec. So regions that force g729 do not work. The VR-server also needs to be on an different server that Unity.

2. Tying together the two previous posts. Unity is supported on either w2k or w2k3. However w2k3 is not supported on various hardware. We have an MCS-7835-H1 (two year old) that they will not support w2k3 on.

[Tommer Catlin]

Thanks for confirming this. We also contacted TAC and they said MCS-7835-h1 will not support W2k3

Cheers!

[a.gooding]

is there anyway to get around the codec issue with the voice recognition? we currently have some g729 regions and ovbiously they are not working. i thought transcoding would have done the trick but i guess not.

thanks

[Tommer Catlin]

If you can sniff out the traffic, Im assuming that the socket port from Unity the Voice-Recognition Server is SIP... even though SIP standard is not 554, they are probably configured to talk on this port because of the UTIM and SIP standards to/from CUCM.

I wouldnt think Codec would be a problem to/from Unity and the remote site. Most people have problems with Unity and setting up the Unity ports in a device pool, then location regions to accept and or transcode codecs to/from regions and locations that are remote.

Might be worth opening a TAC case on this to see what they say. But my understanding of the Voice-Recognition Server is that it is very generic to/from Unity. The call is handed to the voice server and the speech engine on that server takes over.

Probably did not help, but hopefully some insight.

[a.gooding]

thanks, just came back from the customer and we have everything working. The voice recognition software that comes with UNITY 5 MUST use G711. no matter if i have transcoding or not.

thanks in advance

[a.gooding]

guys sorry in my haste i didnt even say what i did.

so basically this was the scenario, we have all branches running G711 locally and G729 across the WAN. This is fine from the UNITY standpoint. however, we introduced the voice recognition server and it was not working fro the branches. the main site was fine since everything there was G711.

so i had regions configured previously. ill just use head office and branch A.

head office = g711

head office to branch A = G729

branch A = G711

Branch A to head office = g729

i couldnt change everything to G711 based on our existing infrastructure. so what i did was the following

create a new region and DP for UNITY using G711 and associating all branches using G711

and on the branches to unity was also g711. Therefore, a branch user calling UNITY would be using G711 but a branch calling head office phones would use G729.

im not too sure if there was an easier way but thats the only way, till now, that i got it working.

im hoping the thinking was on the correct track. its working so thats good but if anyone else has depoyed this using the voice recognition software ill be all open to any advise.

NOTE: before codec conversion, the system will say "voice recognition on" however it does not recognise any commands, 1,2,3,4 etc

thanks in advnace