Design question: Conductor (2x) cluster + 3 vTPs (3 locations)

[nuinoahmed]

Hello all,

I would like to have your input on the following design:

We have an existing video/telepresence solution based on VCS as call controle and we are planning to move to CUCM.

Current setup include few MCU's installed on 3 different locations.  Those MCU's will be replaced with 3 vTPS. 

The idea, is to install a vTPS per location (vTPS1 at LOC1, vTPS2 at LOC2 and vTPS3 at LOC3).  Install 1x Conductor Cluster (Cond1 at LOC1 and Cond2 at LOC2).

We would like to be able to have endpoints group1 to use vTPS1, endpoints group2 use vTPS2 and of course endpoints group3 use vTPS3. (endpoints registered to CUCM).

If I understand correctly the Cisco documentations.  We need 3 ip addresses/location/ conductor.  Wich means 6 ip address on Cond1 and 6 on Cond2 (+ the Mnagament ip address/conductor).

On CUCM side, we will need then to create 6 SIP trunks (1 SIP trunk/Location/Conductor) and same for Conference Bridges.

First of all I would like to get you input so you tell me if you agree with this or you have other ideas.

Thanks.

[Rajkumar Yadav]

Hi,

You are putting 2 conductor in cluster at different location make sure its over MPLS link without VPN, as well vTS supports cascading, you not thinking to cascade two vTS between location ?

Also is this 8 CPU or 30 vCPU vTS?

In regards to IP address each location  would required  2 IP's for ad hoc and rendezvous, so three location would require 6 IP's on primary and another 6 IP's on secondary, plus 2 conductor IP's ( Primary and secondary) for management. 

From CUCM 2 Trunks per location. i.e 6 Trunks in total

Regards,

Raaj

[nuinoahmed]

Hi Raaj,

Yes, sure the Conductors will be on MPLS network with recommended rtd under 30ms. 

About cascading, yes sure I would like to use it between the different vTPS.  Any recommendation?  Anything special I need to take care of with this design?

FYI, the vTPS is mm410v

So we agree also on the number of ip addresses and sip trunks between CUCM cluster and conductors.

[Rajkumar Yadav]

Hi Ahmed,

vTS do support cascade from version 4.0(1.57) onwards.

For your design since you are placing the vTS per location which means you will create the Pools like HQ Pool , LOC 2 Pool, LOC 3 Pool, each of this pool will contain each site specific vTS server as bridge.

Now for each location also you will create service preference like HQ-SP, LOC2 SP and LOC3 SP, each of this will contains its own pool as primary one, as well you can add multiple pools under each SP to achieve the cascade option from conductor.

Note: cascading is to be done from conductor and its supported when vTS is in remote managed mode.

you can refer the same here 

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/telepresence/infrastructure/conductor/admin_guide/TelePresence-Conductor-Admin-Guide-XC4-1.pdf

For adding pools refer page # 52

Also for scheduling as per best practise you can have concept of dedicated bridge

Please go through page # 13,14,15,16.

What is the capacity of this bridge, you procured screen license or using the PMP and SMP license.

Hope this helps.

Please let me know if you have more query.

Please mark as correct if this helps.

Regards,

Raaj

[nuinoahmed]

Hi Raaj,

Thanks for the great comments.

So we will use for sure the latest software version for Conductor cluster and vTS server. 

FYI, the mm410v is remote managed only.  You don't have even to configure it. The Licenses are SMP.

Mainly the meeting are scheduled meeting so I think all 3 vTPS will be used for scheduling and also Ad-Hoc.   Is there a reason why it is good practice to have dedicated bridge for scheduling.  I did read this in several cisco docs but its not yet clear to me.

I think I have now a good picture of te design. But... I have one more question regarding cascading:   If we schedule a meeting with 3 or more video endpoints from each reagion.  Will this meeting be hold on 1 vTPS or on the 3 vTPS with cascading?  

Thanks,

Ahmed

[Patrick Sparkman]

Conference bridges that are dedicated for scheduled/ad-hoc vs shared is really up to you, there is no right or wrong and depends on how you want to setup your environment.  Refer to the "Scheduling Conferences" section of the Conductor XC4.1 Admin Guide starting on pg 13, notable Table 1.

If you setup each location to use their own dedicated conference bridge and need to create a conference that contains endpoints from each location.  The endpoints will connect to the conference hosted on their assigned bridge, and a cascade link will be created between each conference.  Refer to the "Maximum number of cascades" section and associated links in the admin guide on pg 55, as well as the "Cascading with TelePresence Server" section of the Cisco Live presentation BRKCOL-2803.  Note the conference template must have a adequate cascade ports reserved, and each cascade port will always be reserved even when cascading isn't in use.

[Rajkumar Yadav]

Hi Patrick,

I have one question in setup with multiple sites and dedicated bridge.

Provided we configured different scheduling number for conference based on sites and same is being configured in the CUCM and as well in conductor from routing perspective.

However assume a scenario when a user will book a meeting from location 1 on TMS then it will generate its own site scheduled number for the meeting as this would be dependent on the conductor selection, similarly for other sites too.

My intention is that if location 3 user books a meeting TMS should not generate the scheduled meeting range from Location 1 and vice versa. How to achieve this ?

Can you please clear this part for me.

Regards,

Raaj.

[Patrick Sparkman]

I've never configured a Conductor to do this, so this is untested, but you'd most likely need to:

1. Configure a service preference and bridge pool for each dedicated conference bridge.
2. Create a conference template for each service preference.
3. Create a unique conference alias for each conference template using a generated number from TMS.  Refer to Tasks 3-7 on pgs 12-17 in the Conductor with TMS Deployment Guide (XC3.0 with TMS 14.6).

Once you have Conductor and TMS configured, the person scheduling would need to select the Conductor alias that uses their dedicated conference bridge, refer to pgs 18-19 in the mentioned guide.

[Rajkumar Yadav]

Hi Patrick,

Thank you for the reply.

In addition to this we also have to create multiple location in TMS i.e IP Zones and assign those resources like endpoint and conductor (if multiple node non clustered) to those zones.

So the admin while booking if he adds the  max device or participant from specific IP zones then its specific location conductor would be used.

If only one conductor is there for all three zones then he need to basically adjust/select the alias based on the location or does TMS select the specific alias based on maximum endpoint selected for conference ( which i think it does not)

Do you recommend multiple conductor cluster to be added to TMS or single conductor cluster for all zones.

How this would be achieved from TMSXE booking perspective, precisely when there is one conductor cluster.

Regards,

Raaj

[nuinoahmed]

Hi Raaj, Hi Partick,

As I have 3 IP Zones, then I need 3 conductors. Each one in a different IP Zone in order to have conductor selected automatically by TMS based on IP zone of majority of endpoints.  For the Aliases, I don't see any way TMS will select an alias based on maximum endpoints selected...TMS will take the first Alias from selected conductor.  If another Alias is needed then it must be selected by the scheduler.  So a good Alias name MUST be chosen and scheduler must have a good understanding of the different Aliases.

Question: is those conductors part of the same cluster?  or should not be configured as cluster?

Regards,

Ahmed

[Patrick Sparkman]

Raaj, sorry it's taken me awhile to respond, but Ahmed is correct.  If you use any scheduling method other than the full scheduler within TMS, Conductor will use the default to the alias that has the highest priority, this includes TMSXE.  So to ensure the user's conference is created on their respective bridge, they must either use the full scheduler and choose their correct Conductor alias, or you will need a Conductor for each location.

Conductors would most likely have to be independent from each other and not clustered, each Conductor node will have the same configuration and aliases within TMS as the other nodes.  This may or may not help, but if you check the TMS 15.2 Release Notes, you might be able to get an idea how TMS will support Conductor clusters.

[nuinoahmed]

Hello ,

I am coming back to this setup with more questions ;-)

The license we have is SMP license. This is managed by conductor and will be shared between the 3 vTPS.  That's mean we MUST have conductors as cluster. 

If we go with conductor cluster that's mean we loose the possibility to use the IP Zones as we can add only one conductor server in TMS version lower than 15.2.  and even with TMS 15.2 we can add up to 2 Conductor servers in the same cluster but only one will be used for scheduling.

So it seems to me not possible to schedule conferences based on video endpoints locations (IPZone).

Does anyone see any suggestion how we can achive this with one conductor cluster? Any idea what could be the best design?

[nuinoahmed]

Hello all,

Solution above is not supported by Cisco (a vTPS can be managed by only one Conductor or cluster).  So having same vTPS in 2 or 3 conductors is not supported.

Design changed to use 2 conductor servers in a cluster.  3 bridge pools,...and 3 different aliases.  So on TMS scheduler must select the alias manually to select what vTPS will host the meeting.