VMWare ESXi Questions for UC Deployment on UCS C210

[alf]

Hi Team,

we want to deploy a CUCM V8.5 Cluster on two UCS C210 M2 machines.

We´ve ordered the HW and the VMWare ESXi Software (ESXi V4 Standard and VSphere Standard) via Cisco Channel.

We got shipped the Hardware and VMWare PAKs from Cisco but no VMWare install media.

Here are my questions:

1) Do I need to download the WMWare ESXi software from VMWare Web Site ? If yes,

    is there a dependency between the VMWare Version and the shipped PAKs (e.g ESXi 4.0 vs. 4.1) ?

    Which Version of ESXi and vSphere is recommended for UC CUCM deployment ?

2) For VMWare turning off the evaluation licence I need to install real licence codes. Can I use the ESXi PAKs from Cisco

    directly or do I need to register the PAKs on the Cisco Licence Portal to transform the PAKs in a VMWare license code ?

    Again, can I use the PAKs for ESXi 4.0 (printed on carton) for ESXi 4.1 installations to have the actual version of VMWare ?

many thanks for your answers in advance

and best regards

Alfred

[Jonathan Schulenberg · Accepted solution]

1) Do I need to download the WMWare ESXi software from VMWare Web Site ? If yes,
    is there a dependency between the VMWare Version and the shipped PAKs (e.g ESXi 4.0 vs. 4.1) ?
    Which Version of ESXi and vSphere is recommended for UC CUCM deployment ?

Yes you download it from VMware.com. The VMware vSphere PAK is good for all minor releases of vSphere 4 (i.e. 4.0 and 4.1).

2) For VMWare turning off the evaluation licence I need to install real licence codes. Can I use the ESXi PAKs from Cisco directly or do I need to register the PAKs on the Cisco Licence Portal to transform the PAKs in a VMWare license code ? Again, can I use the PAKs for ESXi 4.0 (printed on carton) for ESXi 4.1 installations to have the actual version of VMWare ?

You need to register the PAKs on VMware's website and then combine the one-socket licenses into two-socket licenses. Look at the first page of the PAK license; it has a URL on it to do the activation. Be sure that you use or make the customer activate a VMware Licensing account under their own email address. Do not activate this under your own account if you are the partner. Yes you can use the 4.0 PAK to install 4.1.

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[Tolulope Osho]

Hi Team,

I am very new to the Cisco UC on UCS installation as most of the installations that I have carried out has been on physical servers.

My question is a little bit similar to what Alfred has asked initially.

My own scenario however is

1) I have 2 Cisco C210 that has been bought for the CUCM cluster.

2) I would like to confirm if it is possible to install multiple instances of ESXi on the same physical machine by partitioning the hard-drive and making the different ESXi to boot from the different partitions

3) I understand that CUCM servers offer high availability incase a primary server goes down, devices can register to another active server in the cluster, however this is at the Virtual Machine level. what other form of redundancy can I achieve using VMware's High Availability configuration with the tow c210 servers?

Kindly advice.

[Chris Deren]

Why would you want to install multiple instances of ESXi? The whole purpose of virtulization to host guest VMs on single host, so your ESXi is host OS and Cisco apps running on Appliance Linux or some Windows are your guest OSes.

So, single instance of ESXi running on Cisco UCS server can support multiple Cisco apps such as CUCM, UCON, UCCX, CUEAC, and on and on. For physical redundancy you would want to deploy multiple UCS servers and spread your CUCMs across those.

CUCM application layer redundancy i.e. CUCM groups allow devices such as phones to failover to other CUCMs in case an application failure of one of the VMs.

HTH,

Chris