Voicemail cluster over WAN

[rramlal]

Hi All,

We have to configure voicemail clustering over the wan along with call manager. According to best practice it is recommended to have voicemail ports register locally to the call manager and not across the other sites.

Our setup:

HQ- CUCM Pub, CUC Sub

DR- CUCM sub, CUC PUB

We would like for voicemail ports to register locally to call managers at the locations so that when voicemail is accessed it will not be done across the wan.

Has anyone ever done a setup like this? We have seen documentation from cisco but not configurations.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Chris Deren]

Sure, couple of things to keep in mind, it's not just what the port group in UCXN is configured to point to (use local CUCM sub first), but also what you defined on CUCM.  If this is SIP integration (preferred if on version 8+) then the SIP trunk/Route Group/Route List need to point to local UCXN server first, and another Route Pattern should be build to point to the reverse order, then use 2 voicemail profiles to designate which devices will use which UCXN server as primary. If SCCP integration then simply apply proper device pool to the ports.

[rramlal]

Thank you Chris.

We were using sccp but since sip is preferred we will configure using that instead.

A strange thing was occurring when we were testing failures. For some reason the voicemail ports were not registering to the cucm sub when the cucm pub was brought down. But we will troubleshoot further tomorrow.

If I have any further questions I will respond.

[Terry Cheema]

In my opinion for Unity Connection integration it may be hard to say one or the other is better, even though upstream SIP is becoming the norm. I did ask this question to Cisco couple of times through various channels and have always ended up getting a neutral or a pointer towards SCCP instead of SIP even with the later version 10.

See the response from Unity Connection SME Brad Magnani just a couple of days ago to my same query on the preferred integration method:

Ref: https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12486721/ask-expert-cisco-unity-connection-installing-integrating-and-troubleshooting

"I wish there was a single answer.  Many customers deploy each for different reasons.  SIP seems to have more flexibility when it comes to customizations upstream, however that can also be a draw back if certain aspects aren't tested at the server side.  In my experience, customers choose SCCP over SIP because it's Cisco proprietary, 100% tested tried and true.  Granted, there is more configuration on the CUCM required with SCCP.  SIP is quick, a couple trunks if you've got a cluster and you're pretty much done (from a CUCM perspective).  The simplicity of the configuration is largely what I see in TAC coming from customers - they want something easy that works.  Now, this also depends on the complexity of your environment as well - some very large customers still choose to use SCCP from UC to CUCM but do SIP upstream - there's no 1 recommended way (that I've found at least)."

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You can search some other threads as well on the topic (although some be older, you can search and review what suits your environment):
https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/11261691/unity-connection-sccp-vs-sip-integration

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/10971126/new-unity-connection-install-sccp-vs-sip

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/11756301/cucm-integration-cisco-unity-connection

-Terry