Upgrading from CUCMBE 6.1 to CUCM9 and removing coresident Unity Connection

[bascheew]

One of our customers wants to upgrade from CUCM Business Edition 6.1 to 9 however they no longer want or use Unity Connection which is co-resident on the same 7828i3 server.  I see that a direct upgrade from 6.1 to 9 is supported, however how should we go about removing Unity Connection and freeing up that space so that CUCM can use it?  We don't have any other MCS or UCS servers in the mix so we need to work around this one piece of hardware.

Thank you in advanced!

[barry · Accepted solution]

Hi

Unfortunately you can't do this. You can't change deployment types during upgrade, or to be honest via any other method.

The only thing you could do is use BAT to export the current configuration details, and rebuild the server from scratch, this time as a standalone CUCM server.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

As an aside, I've never had any serious issue with CUCM requiring additional space or not having sufficient resources, even on a coresident BE5K. The only time I've run out of memory or disk space has generally been because of memory leaks and with these, it doesn't matter how many resources you throw at it it will run out eventually.

HTH.

Barry Hesk

Intrinsic Network Solutions.

[bascheew]

That's what I was afraid of, thank you.  I also reached out to a Cisco colleague and he responded with the following suggestions:

Option 1
I would pull a backup, install 6.1 on a spare server, restore backup, do upgrade, pull new backup, install on desired final hardware.
Option 2
Upgrade in place with Unity Connection in place, then pull backup, wipe server, and re-install and restore from backup.
Option 3
If smaller deployment, do an export of phone data and configuration details from UCM, and re-deploy onto new fresh install
Option 3 is probably the best since you can do cleanup while you do it.

Option 2 may be the direction I go.  I'll let you know how it goes!

[barry · Accepted solution]

Hi

I think the only issue with option 2 is that Unity Connection will still be *installed* on the new server as I think you will only be able to do a DRS restore to another BE5K installation. You don't need to restore the CUC component from DRS backup.

That's what I understand from the restore guide anyway:

"Before you restore Cisco Unified Communications Manager, ensure that the hostname, IP address, and deployment type of the restore matches the hostname, IP address and deployment type of the backup file that you want to restore. DRS does not restore across different hostnames, IP addresses and deployment type"

This might cause you issues further down the line actually. If you install as a BE5K you then wouldn't be able to add a Subscriber later to the cluster. Personally, assuming it's not a massive system, I would probably go with option 3.

Just my 2p worth.

Barry Hesk

Intrinsic Nework Soutions

[bascheew]

That's a very valid point about DRS which I didn't consider.  Maybe option 3 will be the most trouble-free route, it will just be a little more work!  Thank you.