Maximum number of Permanent Conferences on MSE 8510

[ouhakheme]

Hello --

I understand that this number is 500 on the MSE 8510.  However, when you cluster 3 blades, does this number grow to 1500?  I assume it should.

Please let me know.

Thanks!

[Martin Koch]

as the additional blades are more or less the extension of the media ports and the management

and everything still goes over the master I would not expect tough.

Feel free to try it out.

Anyhow, in a scale where you think of having that many conference, it might be more handy

to just use the auto creation of meetingrooms or use the conductor to create conferences on

demand and on the fly.

[ouhakheme]

Conductor is not an option unfortunately.  We also need a PIN on the conferences as well so auto creation is out.

That said, if we are stuck at 500, can we cascade the three MCUs instead?  What are the pitfalls of cascading MCUs?

[shkn]

Hi,

Not sure if you are trying to get more than 500 participants in a single meeting. If not then MCU’s can be added separately in the Call control device.

Regards

Shyam

[ouhakheme]

We are wanting to use the meet-me or permanent conference feature on the MCU.  Everyone will receive a conference bridge number along with a PIN, but the max number of participants will depend on the ports available.

[Paulo Souza]

I understand that this number is 500 on the MSE 8510.  

Sorry, I am really confused on this limitation. Where did you find that information? Because I was looking MCU's documentation and I have found a limitation related to the number of scheduled conference you can have on 8510, the limit is 200, not 500. See:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/telepresence/infrastructure/mcu/admin_guide/Cisco_TelePresence_MCU_4-4_Product_administration_guide.pdf

As you said 500, Could you point some reference? Otherwise, you should be aware that the limitation is 200. And I agree with Martin, the cluster won't scalate the capacity (3x200), because with a cluster, the scheduled conferences are replicated to other MCUs in the cluster, so the limit remains the same, 200.

Regards

Paulo Souza

Please rate replies and mark question as "answered" if applicable.

[ouhakheme]

The MCU allows a maximum number of conferences, which varies by model as follows:

MCU 4200 Series, MCU 4500 Series, and MCU MSE 8420: 200 conferences maximum

MCU 5300 Series and MCU MSE 8510: 500 conferences maximum

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/telepresence/infrastructure/mcu/api_guide/MCU_API_2-10.pdf

[Paulo Souza]

Thanks for the link. So I think there is some kind of mismatched information, because the link I posted also refers to 8510, it is a administrator guide for latest software version.

I also took a document of an older version, 4.1, this doc is specific to MCU 4500 and 8510, the doc also says limitation 200.

I am really confused now.

Paulo Souza

Please rate replies and mark question as "answered" if applicable.

[Paulo Souza]

The link for the old doc, version 4.1:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/telepresence/infrastructure/mse/admin_guide/MCU_4500_MSE_8510_Printable_Online_Help_4-1.pdf

Paulo Souza

Please rate replies and mark question as "answered" if applicable.

[ouhakheme]

I got the following from Cisco, not sure the source:

The maximum number of permanent conferences that can be configured on an MCU is 200, or as of 4.2 software 500 on the 8510. However, currently it is only possible to make 100 H.323 registrations from a single device and 50 SIP registrations from a single device. So you will not be able to register every conference with the VCS. A work around for H.323 is to register the MCU with a prefix. For SIP the workaround is to use a SIP trunk.

So it changed in 4.2 for the 8510 only.

[Paulo Souza]

Thanks for your feedback.

I think Cisco's documentation should be specific on this matter, because the doc I posted previously is a administrator guide of the version 4.4, the doc clearly says 200. But according to your feedback, it is 500 as of 4.2 version.

I guess you could send a feedback to Cisco asking them to update the documentation.

Regards

Paulo Souza

Please rate replies and mark question as "answered" if applicable.

[Martin Koch]

With the prefix or service prefix it should not be a problem, especially you can make nice

search rules. besides that you could also use a neighbor zone.

It can also be handy to use enum and map addresses or a cpl (server).

Regards the documentation yes, that is true, there is always room for improvements .. :-)

Thought I had seen that in the release notes, but maybe it was an info in an internal

meeting as we had this as a feature request.

Regards the problem itself, you could ask to have an external list (ldap, csv file, ...) to static/dynamic

get conference ids from for the conductor which could also include a guest-id and pin numbers.

This would be a feature request. I mentioned that earlier to Cisco,  not sure if that person filed it as a

feature request

With some programming skills you could also do something yourself as your own CPL server with API

access to the MCU.

[Paulo Souza]

Regards the problem itself, you could ask to have an external list (ldap, csv file, ...) to static/dynamic
get conference ids from for the conductor which could also include a guest-id and pin numbers

I totally agree with that suggestion!

Personally, I cannot imagine an environment with 500 static conferences created on a MCU. I have never seen such thing.

Paulo Souza

Please rate replies and mark question as "answered" if applicable.

[ouhakheme]

Does anything change if we use the 8710 instead?