TMS Booking with MCU Cascading

[Tinnakorn Mukudomlarp]

Hi,

My customer have some questions about booking in TMS, they have 2 MCUs (4205,5320), CTS endpoints and TMS 14.2

They want to use 5320 as the main confernce for booking but if resource on 5320 is not enough for booking then automatic cascade 4205 to expand the capacity.

I found in the TMS admin guide about distribution routing (least cost routing and best impression) but I'm not sure this feature meet the above requirement.

The admin guide also said "Using different models of MCU in a cascade when manually configuring cascading is not supported in Cisco TMS"

Note sure does it means cascading different model of MCU in TMS is not supported?

Anyone try this before please advice.

Thank you.

Regards,

Tinnakorn

[Kjetil Ree · Accepted solution]

Tinnakorn Mukudomlarp wrote:
Note sure does it means cascading different model of MCU in TMS is not supported?

Hi,

This means that you cannot mix for example a TelePresence MCU, a TANDBERG MCU, and a TelePresence MPS in the same conference.

TMS treats all ex-Codian MCUs at the same model, so your customer is fine with cascading a 5320 to a 4205.

Regards,

Kjetil

[Tinnakorn Mukudomlarp]

Hi Kjetil,

Thank you so much.

How about automatic cascading using TMS, have you ever tried this scenario before?

They want to use 5320 as the main confernce for booking but if resource  on 5320 is not enough for booking then automatic cascade 4205 to expand  the capacity.

Regards,

Tinnakorn

[Kjetil Ree · Accepted solution]

You cannot necessarily force TMS to use a 5320 over a 4205. Remember, TMS treats all ex-codians as the same, so it is undefined which of the two bridges TMS will prefer.

Also note that TMS does not automatically cascade; cascading always requires user invention. The user must explicitly choose a distribution algorithm.

-Kjetil

[Paulo Souza]

Kjetil,

I have tested a scenario with two Codian MCU 4500. When you schedule a conference and select a number of participants that demands more than just one MCU, TMS automatically selects both MCUs in order to setup the conference. There is no need for manual intervention. The distribution is made automatically.

Tinnakorn,

Be aware then when you setup a cascade conference, PIN feature is not supported for this kind od conference. Also consider that, in order to TMS select MCU Codian automatically, you must to define MCU Codian as the preferred MCU on TMS’s configuration, otherwise you will have to manually choose the two MCUs when scheduling the conference.

Regards,

Paulo Souza

[Tinnakorn Mukudomlarp]

Hi Paulo,

Thank you so much for your information.

I'll test it again at customer site.

Regards,

Tinnakorn

[Kjetil Ree]

Paulo Souza wrote:
I have tested a scenario with two Codian MCU 4500. When you schedule a conference and select a number of participants that demands more than just one MCU, TMS automatically selects both MCUs in order to setup the conference. There is no need for manual intervention. The distribution is made automatically.

That is not the expected behavior. When a meeting cannot be hosted on one MCU alone, TMS shold display a "There are not enough resources on any MCU to host your meeting. Please go back and remove some of the participants, or lower the conference bandwidth" error, and then force the user to explicitely choose distribution.

If what you have seen can be reproduced consistently, we have a bug!

-Kjetil

[Paulo Souza]

Hi Kjetil,

I tested it using TMS 13.0. It is not newest version, but I can tell with great assurance, that works consistently!

I will try to test a scenario like that using TMS 14.2 to see the behavior.  =)

Regards

Paulo Souza

[Kjetil Ree]

I just tested with 13.2 and 14.2.1, and both behave like I described (saving was declined with a "There are not enough resources on any MCU to host your meeting. [...]" error). I don't have a 13.0 at hand to test with, but I don't think there should be any difference.

[Paulo Souza]

Hi Kjetil,

Thank you for testing! My customer is using it on version 13.0 as I said and it works. But it is nice to know that it does not work on latest versions. I will let the customer know when they plan to upgrade their TMS.

The latest projects we are deploying are involving Cisco Conductor, so that cascading is transparent to TMS. Major customers with many endpoints and MCUs are using Conductor, that is why we dont have many scenarios without Conductor to test.

Regards

Paulo Souza

[Tinnakorn Mukudomlarp]

Hi Kjetil,

As you mention that "TMS treats all ex-codians as the same, so it is undefined which of the two bridges TMS will prefer"

Can I conclude that if both MCU have enough resources to host the meeting (no cascading), TMS will randomly select MCU for the meeting right?

But if I add the specific MCU to the selected participants while booking, will TMS use that MCU for the meeting or it still randomly select MCU.

In case that one MCU is not enough I need cascading MCU and I want to clarify the word "automatic"

I understand that TMS will not automatically cascade MCU while booking and user need to select the algorithm.

But after user selected the algorithm, TMS will automatically connect all participants and connect MCU to MCU at the scheduled time, Is that right?

Thank you so much for your help

Regards,

Tinnakorn

[Kjetil Ree · Accepted solution]

Tinnakorn Mukudomlarp wrote:
Can I conclude that if both MCU have enough resources to host the meeting (no cascading), TMS will randomly select MCU for the meeting right?

It is not randomly, it is actually quite predictable. But the details on how it actually is done are not public, as they could change between TMS releases (and we do not want customers to start depending on a particular way of choosing it). That was why I said it was "undefined".

But if I add the specific MCU to the selected participants while booking, will TMS use that MCU for the meeting or it still randomly select MCU.

TMS will use that specific MCU you added.

But after user selected the algorithm, TMS will automatically connect all participants and connect MCU to MCU at the scheduled time, Is that right?

Yes, that is right.

-Kjetil

[Tinnakorn Mukudomlarp]

Hi Kjetil Ree,

May I ask you more questions.

Let say if 5320 has 3 ports left and 4205 has 12 ports left, when I schedule the meeting with 5 participants and just select only 5320 to the selected participants column.

Will I get the error that MCU not has enough resource or TMS will automatically add 4205 instead of 5320.

Another question is how TMS monitor MCU ports, is it actually monitor directly to MCU or it calculate port left based on scheduled meeting.

My customer ask me very details about TMS and I don't have the equipment to test right now, also I'm still new in telepresence solution.

Hope that you will help to answer.

Thank you again.

Regards,

Tinnakorn

[Kjetil Ree · Accepted solution]

Let say if 5320 has 3 ports left and 4205 has 12 ports left, when I schedule the meeting with 5 participants and just select only 5320 to the selected participants column. 
Will I get the error that MCU not has enough resource or TMS will automatically add 4205 instead of 5320.

If the user selects an MCU manually, TMS won't try using the other MCU. Saving the conference will be disallowed, with a "There are not enough resources available to host this conference [...] Details: There are not enough available resources on the system to schedule the conference. " error.

Another question is how TMS monitor MCU ports, is it actually monitor directly to MCU or it calculate port left based on scheduled meeting.

Only based upon scheduled meetings.

Regards,

Kjetil

[Paulo Souza]

Hi, just one more detail:

In case that one MCU is not enough I need cascading MCU and I want to clarify the word "automatic"
I understand that TMS will not automatically cascade MCU while booking and user need to select the algorithm.
But after user selected the algorithm, TMS will automatically connect all participants and connect MCU to MCU at the scheduled time, Is that right?

When scheduling the conference, the user must to manually select two MCUs to setup the conference. After selection, TMS will automatically setup a basic cascade schema, that will simply, connect some endpoints to MCU 1, connect MCU 1 to MCU 2, connect some endpoints to MCU 2. You can change this setup if you want, but in general, it is enough to establish a cascade conference.

Be aware that it is not possible to setup a PIN in a cascede conference.

Sorry for the confusion regarding TMS selecting two MCUs without manual intervention, I took exception in an especific environment, but as Kjetil said, you have to manually select two MCUs.

Regards

Paulo Souza