Voip Decentralized vs Centralized Design

[ty.masse]

We have a headquarter location with approximately 200 remote stores.  We're trying to deploy voip for the enterprise.  At the remote store locations, we have 2900 routers.  Some of the stores are about 200 miles away.

Option 1:

Deploying voip and having a centralized call manager.  In that scenario all phones for all the stores would register with the call managers at headquarters with srst.

Option 2:

Having the phones register localy with their respective routers at the stores, but have all features such as DNs, Voice Mail, CS and partitions configured centrally at Headquarters?  Is that possible?

Which option is best for the scenario described above 1 or 2?

Thanks.

[Chris Deren · Accepted solution]

Well, it comes down to how stable is the WAN, what is the bandwidth, is QoS an option, etc. My strong preference would always be to centralize as much as possible for ease of administration, ease of integration between sites, dial-plan consolidation, streamlined future upgrades, etc. Others migh have different point of view, but I have successfully deployed many, many centralized environment over the last several years.

My 2 cents.

HTH,

Chris

[ty.masse]

Thanks.

[travis-dennis_2]

Just to reiterate what Chris said, centralized is my preference as well.  In addition to what he pointed out the ability to use CME and Unity Express for backup call processing and voice mail makes a centralized model even more attractive. You didn’t mention (although I assume) that each location had their own local connectivity to the PSTN but if so that makes centralized with CME as SRST even more attractive. Done properly the locations would only lose call processing capability for the time it takes the phones to re-register to the local gateway.  If you have a stable WAN (and even a backup WAN connection) that would rarely happen

[ELENA OKULOVA]

Hi!

Where can I read any general recomendations from Cisco about maximum number of phones in remote office that should be deployed with own UCM instead of being connected to centralized UCM deployment?

SRND doesnt't talk about that.

I understand that it is all about WAN, but still - if WAN situation was no problem whatsoever - what would be the answer?

Somewhere I've seen 50 phones...

[Chris Deren]

The only place I would add a local CUCM server would be at a remote location that is very large and no SRST router can support it, which means 1500+ phones (As 3945E can support that many):

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6788/vcallcon/ps2169/data_sheet_c78-632010.html

Or if this is a critical sites where all features and functionallity is needed at all times and E-SRST is not being implemented.

HTH,

Chris

[Anurag Siddhu]

I will recommend a centralized call manager with cme and cue in srst in branch routers , this will be the best option given the fact that you have a stable wan link

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