UC 500 Software Packs - Page 6

Steven DiStefano · ‎09-15-2009

[toc:faq]

General Information

The UC 500 Software Packs bundle all the necessary files for the UC 500 Series platform. The files include UC 500 IOS image, voicemail and automated attendant CUE software, IP Phone firmware files, and multiple TAR/archive files for various components of the UC 500 (for example vlan information, default configuration files for each product SKU, ringer files for IP Phones, music-on-hold files, background images for colored IP Phones, etc.). The UC 500 Software Packs are thoroughly tested with CCA releases and are pre-installed on UC 500 shipped from Cisco.

For any questions relating to the UC 500 Software Packs please email uc500-swp@cisco.com.

To download the latest UC 500 Series software go here:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-9829/

For the latest CCA software go here:

http://www.cisco.com/go/configassist

For the latest OM software go here:

http://www.cisco.com/go/officemanager

Software Pack Roadmap

Note: Timelines & Releases are tentative and are subjected to change

Software Pack	Release Timeframe	IOS	CME	CUE	Compatible CCA
8.6.2	2013-JUL	15.1(4)M6	8.6	8.6.5	3.2.3
8.6.1	2012-NOV	15.1(4)M5	8.6	8.6.5	3.2.2
8.6.0	2012-JUN	15.1(4)M4	8.6	8.6.3	3.2.1
8.2.0	2011-JUL	15.1(2)T4	8.1	8.0.6	3.1
8.1.0	2010-DEC	15.1(2)T2	8.1	8.0.3	3.0
8.0.5	2010-NOV	15.0(1)XA3a	8.0	8.0.3	2.2.6
8.0.4	2010-AUG	15.0(1)XA3a	8.0	8.0.2	2.2.5
8.0.3	BETA¹	15.0(1)XA3a	8.0	8.0.2	2.2.5 (Beta)
8.0.2	2010-MAR	15.0(1)XA2	8.0	7.1.3	2.2.2
8.0.1	2010-FEB	15.0(1)XA1a	8.0	7.1.3	2.2.2
8.0.0	2009-NOV	15.0(1)XA	8.0	7.1.3	2.2
7.0.4	2009-OCT	12.4(20)T4	7.0	7.0.3	2.1.1
7.1.3	2009-SEP	12.4(24)SB	7.1	7.0.3	2.1

1. Software Pack 8.0.3 was only released as a BETA release.

2. Software Pack 8.0.5 was an unplanned release in response to CSCti85760

Phone Firmware Matrix

Software Pack	SPA-525G	SPA-50X SPA-30X	SPA 51x	7914	7915 7916	7921 7925	7936	7937	7940 7960	79XX	6901 6911	6921 6941 6961	8961 9951 9971
8.6.2	7.5.2c	7.5.2c	7.5.2d	5.0.4	1.0.4	1.4.1SR1	3.3.21	1.4.4	8.1.2	9.1.1	9.1.1	9.1.1	9.2.2
8.6.1	7.5.2a	7.5.2b	7.5.2b	5.0.4	1.0.4	1.4.1SR1	3.3.21	1.4.4	8.1.2	9.1.1	9.1.1	9.1.1	9.2.2
8.6.0	7.4.9c	7.4.9c		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.4.1SR1	3.3.21	1.4.4	8.1.2	9.1.1	9.1.1	9.1.1	9.2.2
8.2.0	7.4.8a	7.4.8a		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.4SR1	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.4S	9.0.2	8.5.4	--
8.1.0	7.4.6	7.4.6		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.4SR1	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.4S	9.0.2	8.5.4	--
8.0.5	7.4.4	7.4.4		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.4SR1	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.3S	--	--	--
8.0.4	7.4.4	7.4.4		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.4SR1	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.3S	--	--	--
8.0.3	7.4.4	7.4.4		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.3	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.3S	--	--	--
8.0.2	7.4.3	7.4.3		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.3	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.3S	--	--	--
8.0.1	7.4.3	7.4.3		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.3	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.3S	--	--	--
8.0.0	7.4.2	7.4.2		5.0.4	1.0.4	1.3.3	3.3.20	1.3.4	8.1.2	8.5.3S	--	--	--
7.0.4	7.1.9	7.1.3c		5.0.3	1.0.3	1.2.1 / 1.3.1	3.3.16	1.3.2	8.0.1	8.4.2S	--	--	--
7.1.3	7.1.9	7.1.3c		5.0.3	1.0.3	1.2.1 / 1.3.1	3.3.16	1.3.2	8.0.1	8.4.2S	--	--	--

Firmware version 8.1.17 will be the last release for the CP-52X model phones bundled with the Software Packs.

MD5 Checksum

A UC 500 Software Pack contains a bundle of various software components resulting to a large zip file - E.g. 300MB. To validate the integrity of the Software Pack before use with CCA the checksum of the Software Pack can be compared to the MD5 checksum posted here. A program like FSUM can be used to compute the checksum-

http://www.slavasoft.com/fsum/

C:\SWP\8.0.5>fsum UC5*

SlavaSoft Optimizing Checksum Utility - fsum 2.52.00337
Implemented using SlavaSoft QuickHash Library <www.slavasoft.com>
Copyright (C) SlavaSoft Inc. 1999-2007. All rights reserved.

; SlavaSoft Optimizing Checksum Utility - fsum 2.52.00337 <www.slavasoft.com>
;
; Generated on 11/30/10 at 17:26:58
;
0a3f57b0a86e31b79cfe44e9503fb376 *UC520_8.0.5.zip
335b94e433d26f2c792e46072000122f *UC540_8.0.5.zip
f49be072816f67e92d3c45aca89a5215 *UC560_8.0.5.zip

C:\SWP\8.0.5>

Software

Pack

UC520

UC540

UC560

8.1.0

6daf84694817c48d137dda9581f13df2

a8daf57fbc3345c08a7f9a3e54a5aa29

e0e116d1de929bb9f6bf4815ccbad873

8.0.5

0a3f57b0a86e31b79cfe44e9503fb376

335b94e433d26f2c792e46072000122f

f49be072816f67e92d3c45aca89a5215

8.0.4

262e48b32d94bc281885c763fd62e570

bce30391a3278c782230defe3b3820bc

454296bd0024d6b4bc5f005d9f9b357c

General Announcements

12-20-2010 - Software Pack 8.1.0 and the corresponding Locale Packs have been posted on the Support Community and CCO.
11-30-2010 - Software Pack 8.0.5 and the corresponding CUE localization files have been posted on the Support Community and CCO. SWP 8.0.2 and 8.0.4 along with the corresponding localization files will be removed from the Support Community on 12-3-2010. If these files are needed after their removal they can still be downloaded from CCO, or email uc500-swp@cisco.com to request the specific files needed.

Alberto Montilla · ‎03-06-2012

Dear UC500 partners;

I would like to offer my apologies for the delay on the release of the software pack. UC500 is now a mature solution, so before any release we need to ensure it has the necessary quality. As said originally, we ran into some major quality issues with the last IOS image when applied to the UC500, so had to hold the release until the fixes are in place. This is the only reason for the delay of the firmware. The IOS image has now a firm and committed delivery date, and we adapted the release of the UC500 software pack to this date, which is early april (estimating 10th of April).

Albrecht; I would like to personally know what issues you have been facing on the UC500. Although it is not a perfect product, UC540 has a good reputation for reliability, so very interested to understand your challenges with the product.

I would also like to understand your other points, since we are more than ever committed to our Small Business partners. Please reach me at amontill at cisco dot com with your feedback and contact details.

Regards;
Alberto

rick.mancinelli · ‎03-06-2012

Alberto,

With all due respect, I would argue AGAINST saying that the UC500 is now a mature product.

First and foremost, the CCA tool still cannot perform many of the more advanced configuration tasks that customers require. There are literally 100's of examples here.

Second, the known issue with CUE filling up its disk space is troubling to say the least.

Third, CCA continues to create unneeded config entries and leave behind orphaned config entries thus complicating the troubleshooting process that much more.

Additionally, the presence tool (Call Connector), supports only DN based presence and not device based presence. This is a HUGE issue when you have assistants answering their boss' phone yet the reception doesn't see the assistant as being off hook.

Also with Call Connector, the licensing is tied inexplicably to the MAC address of the machine rather than the user account. If you happen to use virtualized desktops, this wreaks havoc on the licensing system and eventually causes "out of license" errors.

The latest phones (8800, 9900) are not even supported. It isn't as though these phones just came out a few weeks or a month or two ago. They have been commercially available for a good while now.

RADIUS based call accounting is a joke - and problematic to say the least. Ever try configuring Call Connector with a RADIUS based call accounting tool? I know, it might be a stretch that someone would actually want Presence AND Call Accounting. (grrrr) The only way to make it work is to manually configure RADIUS via CLI.

I could go on and on.... but the single biggest issue keeping this from being a "mature" product is that the dang configuration tool (CCA) doesn't support most use cases. We have not had ONE UCxx install where we didn't need to go CLI for one thing or another. THIS is not the sign of a "mature" product.

You want my opinion? Scrap it. Scrap the whole UC5xx and UC3xx product line. Unify the voice products under the Call Manager / Communications Manager banner. Have a single code base that supports the smallest to the largest sites. You can still sell appliances, if so desired, but make them small little servers with a hard drive (or SSD), RAM, CPU, etc and load 'em up with scaled down versions of UCMBE.

Done!

Te result would be a single set of code to support. One set of peripherals to support. One set of phones to support. One set of APIs for 3rd parties to deal with. One presence tool. No more market confusion between features on CME versus CM. Easy upgrade path as companies grow - no more needing to scrap UC5xx or CME to load CM. You could even provide license keys which unlock particular advanced features. Best of all, it could be sold as a virtual appliance, too!

I just do not understand the continued love affair within Cisco with the CME/UC5xx product suite. You have an AWESOME product in CM. You've already taken some steps to scale CM down and created the UCMBE editions. Take the final step and create UCM-SMB and kill off CME/UC5xx once and for all!

Rick

Alberto Montilla · ‎03-06-2012

Hi Rick;

Thanks for your valuable opinion. We always want to hear partners feedback, it is always positive.

Regards;
Alberto

rick.mancinelli · ‎03-06-2012

Alberto-

Thank you! I love Cisco products and I believe in the company, so I can get a little passionate at times.

I hope Cisco can right this ship before too long as products from MiTel and, especially ShoreTel, are typically lower priced, more fully featured, and better supported. (note TAC support is awesome, but SBCS support can be challenging at times)

We've actually strongly considered taking on ShoreTel or MiTel for our SMB clients and only bringing Cisco into the mix when the user count exceeds 100... If I have to support different products for the SMB and Enterprise Clients, I might as well choose an SMB product that my clients actually believe in, no?

Rick

Alberto Montilla · ‎03-06-2012

Hi Rick;

UC500 is very competitive price and feature wise with many of our competitors including Shoretel. I am not sure how much hands-on or real deployment experience you have with those vendors, but can tell you experience is at least par. You may be emotional about some of the challenges we have had over time, but as per today the system is very competitive, though not perfect. We continue evolving our portfolio for the success of our partners, like you, who want to have a successful business practice.

Regards
Alberto

paolo bevilacqua · ‎03-06-2012

Rick, I read your post and agree with almost all what you say. However, having many CMEs in production, ranging from four to hundreds of phones, and having compared it with the competition and the CM as well, I think it is actually a great idea with fantastic features, that made all my customers happy. Of course, I never use any GUI ever to configure it, and admittedly, is not an easy task to get it right all the time. I could list here at least 10 things that CME does out of the box, and CM does only after buying cosily and complex add-ons, each one requiring a new server.

I also think that the UC500 is a great idea, as it packages what is too time-consuming and confusing to order separately. By the way, a customer of mine doesn't end praising the 1/8" MoH port only found on the UC500.

The real issue here is software. Probably, Cisco should have began IOS quality testing on the UC500 way earlier, in order to find these issues and avoiding the huge gap in software delivery continuity that we are suffering. Hopefully they will learn from the past and become more aggressive on delivering feature parity with the ISR G2. In my opinion, it's what it takes to win in today's markets.

bill.roland · ‎03-06-2012

As a former end user (customer) of a UC560 system, I found Rick's posts to be pretty much dead on. We have now moved on to a CUCM BE 5000 system, and couldn't be happier. I think there's a lot of potential for the UC5xx platform, but Cisco's got to come to grips with some truths and make some changes going forward.

Marcel Tempelman · ‎03-06-2012

Rick, certainly has a point. One standard platform is preferable and the CUCM base is the way to go. The differences in features is sometimes really annoying; Often we run into situations where CME/UC5xx lack advanced features (good and stable attendant console, customers who need that we steer towards CUCM and a 3rd party application) but CUCM often falls short on simple features (B-ACD, flexible day/night switching, Paging). The AIM-CUE/Unity Express offers simple straight-forward scripting and routing options which are hard to recreate in Unity Connection.

One platform will make support and training a lot more straight-forward. Keep the voice options in IOS but only for voice-gw operations. BTW who thought that adding a fourth platform, UC300, was a great idea ?

My wishlist:

- Featureparity on all platforms with scalability based on platform.

- No licensepenalty for customers wishing to grow to another platform (UC500/CME to CUCM for example is painful right now).

But now in defense for the UC500-series: CCA has come a long way, and a lot of config work can be done in it although not all. Be aware the UC500 is positioned as a SMB-solution with certain limitations (CME allows more flexibility, including support on CLI coniguration). SPA phones have their limitations too. I've done a few installations with little CLI work (please let us add a prefix in CCA to the calling party on incoming calls!!!!!!!). There are still some issues to be resolved but currently the software is way better and certainly usable for configuration and management.

dytechitsolutions · ‎03-06-2012

Alberto,

we have different and often time-consuming problems, these problems can often work around via CLI or even have to solve. But our commitment no customer wants to pay. “In a telephone system in this price range you would expect just a mature solution”.

You wanted to hear some of our problems...
Here are only some problems, if you want I can adds numerous:

- With the GUI you are still not in a position to set some pretty simple stuff. If you use the GUI you get sometimes problems witch need one more time to fix them.

- Two of our Customers use a CTI (ESTOS) which is much better, than the solution from cisco. But we get a problem with RAM of the UC when the CIT is in use. After 1-2 days 100% RAM is in use. A "show mem" after 8 hours indicates that there are obviously several dead storage areas in RAM. The system is not achievable then – just a restart helps. The uc500-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M2. should be a solution – but after a test we get new problems.

Then we have problems with the localization.
- The translation files of several phones have bugs. "Delete" translated as "cloud less" in the German profile is almost funny. This is only one mistake of already existed for a while now.

- The dialetone or menu items change for no reason after reboot for phones, not all but only some.

-the date Problem at the SPA525G2 in the past month

- The calls will be routed via the B-ACD does not appear in the CTI.

- Problems with incoming or outgoing faxes. Faxes take a long time or cannot be sent received.

- The system lacks the functionality offered by almost all manufacturer in Europe easily. Especially for ISDN features are missing in my knowledge, e.g. "Call deflection (partial rerouting)" or "recall for external calls", etc.
Perhaps the existing functions offered, are a quantum leap for several countries? But some features are missing.

We have found workarounds or solutions for several problems – but is this normal?

There are PBXs with a very similar scope of services at a lower price that one has to run in half the time without big problems on.

So - please give me some good reason to buy a UC500
A homogeneous solution which works without problems - no
Save money with a professional and homogeneous solution - no
Simple, fast and competent support - no
High quality - no
Components that harmonize well with other components of the same manufacturer - no
An “easy-to use and configure solution” - no
Priced for small and SMB companies - no

Thanks

Albrecht

Marcel Tempelman · ‎03-07-2012

Hi Albrecht,

I agree that CCA does have a US-focus when installing, also with the call-routing options (in The Netherlands we rarely use AA and when we do we want to use it only to play nighttime/closing messages). For callback we have to add the outside prefix in CLI, but this disrupts the dialplan config-option in CCA (why ask for outside prefix during setup but don't add it to incoming calls ??).

We have a customer with the same CTI-problems. The CTI-solution was installed by a 3rd party but uses the same middleware. The problem still exists after a year but we were not sure if the problem is a Cisco-problem or an ESTOS-problem. Fact is the customer has to reset the PBX at least once a week.

I still think the platform has potential (although I would favor a small to big line based on CUCM), drop some of the feautures (we never config the firewall, VPN or do wireless on the box) and make it stable.

Regards,

Marcel.

dytechitsolutions · ‎03-07-2012

Hi Marc,

the problem wit ESTOS and further other problems are solved with uc500-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M2 - but you get some new one.

That's the reason, because I am so angry about the new releasedate in April.

I can try to solve the problems - but nobody will pay it. Sorry - we all are in a big beta test of Cisco.

Regards,

Albrecht

paolo bevilacqua · ‎03-08-2012

Albrecht Arnold wrote:

...

- The system lacks the functionality offered by almost all manufacturer in Europe easily. Especially for ISDN features are missing in my knowledge, e.g. "Call deflection (partial rerouting)" or "recall for external calls", etc.

Hi Albrecht,

We know that in your country ISDN is enormously more developed and sophisticated than in others. Unfortunately, Cisco has a bad track record of not picking up non-US ISDN features in their products.

Would you please contact me at pbevila@fastmail.fm, I'm interested in seeing if the missing ISDN features can be added using TCL/IVR scripts. That way, even if not 'native' to the system, something is still better than nothing.

Thanks, Paolo.

paolo bevilacqua · ‎03-08-2012

Even if not 100% on-topic, I want to report the email an UC500 customer sent me today, after cutover from a legacy PBX:

I cannot thank you enough for your efforts so far. What a beautiful, professional setup we have. All day I did training and everyone was very impressed with our new phone system and how well it works. Pretty much everything works just as is should. I am very pleased as is everyone else. Thank You.

Now Dear Cisco, you that can acquire companies for billions, and had have shaped the way we live, work and entertrain during the last 25 years, please do that last effort, throw the real resources into CME/UC500 development, make it perfect, and let us professionals become truly proud of what we sell.

Alberto Montilla · ‎03-08-2012

Thanks Paolo for your feedback. We are working hard to continue improving the UC500 solution as well as other SMB target solutions such as UC300 and BE3000.

Regards
Alberto

MatthewGillard · ‎03-08-2012

I'm more annoyed that in New Zealand 75% of companies could get away with the UC300 - which requires zero training or exams for anyone to install, after we've put in the time / effort to do the training / sit the exams become a partner etc makes it feel like a waste of time and money...

so either bring down the pricing further for those bothering to be certified, or loose the UC500 altogether and bring the BE3000 down a bit..