Need help on designing and deploying VC network

[smart5]

Hi folks, need some help here as i have no experience in VC deployment and seems like my predecessor has made a mess in the existing environment.

To share the existing setup..

- Currently We have 1 VCS-C and 1 VCS-E deployed in China-Guangzhou, we have the E20 and MXP units deployed over multiple countries (e.g Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Singapore)..

- Guangzhou VC units are registered on the VCS-C

- Singapore, Hong Kong units are registered on VCS-E

- The "fantastic" idea my predecessor came about is to have remote sites dial to each other using Internet rather than MPLS as we have smaller pipe for the MPLS.. But having said that, and with those units registered on VCS-E, i'm not 100% sure if the VideoConf are actually using Internet or MPLS as the units (for e.g in Singapore) have a local LAN IP address which is routable in the MPLS network..

So now i have come into the picture and i'm trying to make things alittle bit better.. but i have some questions in mind, if you guys able to help answer them.

1) Can we run multiple VCS-E in our environment using the same public domain (e.g example.com). Like 1 VCS-E deployed in Guangzhou, and 1 VCS-E deployed in Singapore, will it cause a conflict to external vendors when they are dialing into our company VC units?

2) Since Guangzhou do not have a CUCM, therefore getting a VCS-C to register the VC units is a logical decision, but in Singapore, we have 2 CUCM in our network, and we intend to upgrade it to ver 8.x to allow registering of E20 and MXP units. Having said that, can the CUCM perform similar function as VCS-C to communicate to VCS-E for traversal? (if we are deploying another VCS-E in Singapore)

3) If the answer to above question 2 is NO.

a) Then does it mean that VideoConf from external network has to go to VCS-E in Guangzhou, then to VCS-C in Guangzhou, then using a SIP trunk to the CUCM in Singapore via MPLS?

b) Will it be better if i register all my Internal network VC units (Singapore, hong kong, etc countries) to the VCS-C in Guangzhou to simplify the deployment? But will it cause a serious strain on my MPLS bandwidth for registering all these units to the VCS-C? Assuming all the VC units are register to the VCS-C, when a VC unit in Hong Kong Dial to Singapore, does the actual video traffic flows via Guangzhou MPLS or it will be a direct peer-to-peer same as IP phone voice UDP?

[Manish Gogna]

Hi,

I would like to make a few points here.

You mentioned that some of the endpoints register to VCS-C and some to VCS-E, which Expressway version are you using?  the ability to register endpoints with Expressway-E was introduced in x8.8 version recently and getting the endpoints to register to Exp-E is done via the steps mentioned in the following guide

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/config_guide/X8-9/Cisco-Expressway-Registrar-Deployment-Guide-X8-9.pdf

Multiple VCS-E's in an environment with same public domain is possible, however you should seriously consider moving the endpoint registration and call control to CUCM where you have the CUCM setup, since that is the recommended deployment going forward. The two guides that will help you setup such a scenario are given below

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/config_guide/X8-8/Cisco-Expressway-SIP-Trunk-to-Unified-CM-Deployment-Guide-CUCM-8-9-10-11-and-X8-8.pdf

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/config_guide/X8-8/Cisco-Expressway-Basic-Configuration-Deployment-Guide-X8-8.pdf

You need to use the above mentioned info in combination with the following tasks:

>> Design the existing Topology

>> List the existing endpoint types, number of endpoints at each location and allocated WAN/MPLS bandwidth

>> Design the new topology with CUCM centric registration/call-control 

>> Compare the costs / technical challenges in deciding to shift to new deployment

>> You mentioned you would try upgrading to 8.x, i think that is not a wise/feasible idea as 8.x/9.x versions are already end of sale. You need to look at an upgrade to 11.x version now to utilize all the features of Video Infrastructure

If you have such a detailed plan documented somewhere then you can expect someone to assist further in a meaningful way, i hope this helps a little bit.

Manish

- Do rate helpful posts -