Ask the Expert: Installing & Configuring Cisco Prime Collaboration 9.0

[ciscomoderator]

With Aashish Jolly and Abhijit Singh Anand

Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. Learn from experts Aashish Jolly and Abhijit Singh Anand about  installation best practices for Cisco Prime Collaboration 9.0 covering different deployment models available today. Also configuration best practices that customers and partners should follow in order to get the best out Cisco Prime Collaboration version 9.0 

Aashish Jolly  is a network consulting engineer who is currently serving as the Unified Communications (UC) consultant for the ExxonMobil Global account. Earlier at Cisco, he was part of the Cisco Technical Assistance Center, where he helped customers Cisco partners with installation, configuring, and troubleshooting UC products such as Cisco UC Manager and Manager Express, Cisco Unity solutions, Cisco Unified Border Element, voice gateways and gatekeepers, and more. He has been associated with Cisco UC for more than seven years. He holds a bachelor of technology degree as well as CCIE(Voice) # 18500, CCNP Voice,  CCNA,  VCP 5 and RHCE certifications. 

Abhijit Singh Anand is a network consulting engineer with the Cisco Advanced Services Field Delivery team in New Delhi. His current role involves designing, implementing, and optimizing large-scale collaboration solutions for enterprise and defense customers. He has also been an engineer at Cisco's Technical Assistance Center. Having worked on multiple technologies including wireless and LAN switching, he has been associated with Cisco Unified Computing technologies since 2006. He holds a master’s degree in computer applications and multiple certifications, including CCIE (Voice) #19590, RHCE, CWSP, and CWNP.

This event is a continuation of our Facebook Forum event.

Remember to use the rating system to let Aashish and Abhijit know if you have received an adequate response.  

Aashish and Abhijit might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Collaboration, Voice and Video sub-community   forum shortly after the event. This event lasts through June 28, 2013. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

[Aashish Jolly]

Hi Maheshwar,

    I'm a little unclear on your ask in 3. Configuring Max sessions on SIP trunk has no impact on calling i.e. even if you have a capacity of 500 configured in CUSM, you can still make 550 calls over that SIP trunk.

5. Yes, if VG224 is configured as SIP, it will show up under SIPServer Group

6. VG224 shows up as a single entitity currently there's no method of monitoring status of Analog Phones.

8. Do you have locations configured in CUCM ? Additionally is CUSM added as a billing server in CUCM ? Without these, the portlets won't display any data.

Regards,

Aashish

[Maheshwar Tayal]

Hi Ashish

8. Do you have locations configured in CUCM ? Additionally is CUSM added as a billing server in CUCM ? Without these, the portlets won't display any data.

Yes, it is added.As I mentioned: we are able to monitor Top5 WAN tarffic locations, also Top 5 Utilized Trunks

But

We are unable to get any details under Top 5 Poor Quality locations and under Top 5 Call failure locations; do we need to configure some specific settings

Also please confirm point number 4

[ahmed-hassan1110]

Hi Support, I'm posting here in the ASK THE EXPERT for the CPCA product to get answers to my following questions, so could you please help:

   I have CPCA 9.0.0-24376 with patch 1 and 3 installed and here is my questions:

1. I have SIP trunk between my voice gateway (which physically connected to Ethernet interfaces) so they are not detected as voice interfaces, and the customer needs to monitor voice calls over these SIP trunks and their utilization, so how that can happen ?
2. Although route groups are configured on the UCM non of them are monitored under the "Top 5 Utilized Trunk/Route Groups" ??
3. Top 5 WAN traffic locations are not showing any data?
4. in the service health summary I can't see the status of two CUE although they are discovered and in managed status?
5. i have configured the maximum capacity for all H323, SIP trunks I have in the cluster but still can't find a way to monitor the current call volume for the calls going through them ?
6. How can i monitor the calls through FXO ports ?
7. I configured all required for LDAP integration and when i test the connection it says the connection with LDAP server is successful, then i added users and marked them as LDAP users, and when a user try to login with his LDAP account, the authentication fails ??
8. I have 5 CUEs 2 on NM and 3 are AIM, the AIM is said to be unsupported after the discovery while they are all version 8 and above which is as per the supported devices should be supported so why is that?
9. Why after fixing an alarm cause the alarm is still appearing in the alarm center and also on the topology diagram till I delete it manually? why not disappearing automatically ?

[Aashish Jolly]

Hi Ahmed,

     Please find below answers to your queries

1. You can use Detailed Device View of the Voice Gateway. The Call Statistics for Interfaces section does show information on active calls on a particular interface, the information is not real time though.

2. Need a screen shot. Also please let me know if the voice gateway is configured for dual protocol especially MGCP & H323. You can hover the mouse on the voice gateway and lists the capabilities.

6. Detailed Device View, Performance Graphs have options for FXO ports, Gateway Diagnostic View also has a portlet on voice interfaces, that should show FXO ports. Please make sure FXX Polling is enabled though (Administration >> System Setup >> Polling & Threshold)

8. Could you enable debug level logging for discovery, inventory. Perform a discovery of CUE and send us the logs ?

9. What happens when you either ack or clear the alarm ? If it re-appears after some time, you may need to check the device again.

For the rest i.e. 3, 4, 5, 7 are being discussed internally and I should get back to you soon.

Regards,

Aashish

[ahmed-hassan1110]

Hi Aashish,

     thanks for your reply, please find below my replies:

• regarding points 1 and 6, I'm fine with the performance monitoring for calls monitoring.
• regarding point 2, some VGWs are configured with H323 and SIP but not H323 and MGCP in the same time, and here is the screen shoot:
• 
• regarding point 8, kindly advice how to enable these debugs and how to collect the outputs ?
• regarding point 9, this is very weired, i will give you an example, i have a router has a red icon on the topology diagram while when I right click on the device and choose alarm browser it gives me no alarms are available for this device and here is the screen shots:
  • 
  • 

[Abhijit Singh Anand]

Hi Ahmed, Regarding point no 3 - "No Data in Top 5 WAN Locations":

-- What's the UCM version? How many nodes do you have in the UCM cluster?

-- Need to see how you've configured locations in UCM. Please SSH into the UCM Publisher and collect the output of the below query:

run sql select * from location

-- Do you have locations configured with "Audio Bandwidth" *not* set to "UNMIMITED"? If no such locations exist, this might be the reason for no data in the dashlet. Try to configure a value other than UNLIMITED for audio bandwidth for a few locations and make some test calls from phones in these locations. After that, wait a while, clear the cache of your web browser and check the dashlet again.

-- If some locations are configured with Au bandwidth other than UNLIMITED, please send the below logs from CPCA:

1. All files in the folder:  /opt/CSCOpx/data/gsu/_#GSUDATA#_/

2. /opt/CSCOpx/log/CUOM/portal/*.log

Regards,

Abhijit

[ahmed-hassan1110]

Hi Abhijit,

•      Regarding point number 3:
  • UCM version is 8.6 and I have 1 Publisher and 3 Subscribers one in the local site and the remaining 2 is on a branch site.
  • here is the output of the command you mentioned:

               admin:run sql select * from location

               pkid                                 name      kbits id videokbits fkmatrix                             isstandard resynctoggle

               ==================================== ========= ===== == ==========                ==================================== ========== ============

               29c5c1c4-8871-4d1e-8394-0b9181e8c54d Hub_None  0     0  0          49e889c1-d125-4db5-8fac-04d329dfd372 t          f           

               c7e2c026-54b3-55dd-a0a2-d649501f9929 Phantom   0     -1 0          fd3239d4-d88e-4ccb-87be-27bf2cd80bd7 t          f           

               d3c0dfe9-7cdd-b21d-7945-350ccd0a2a34 DMM01_LOC 0     1  384        a2e726fa-e7d2-4e73-88eb-ae4132f25348 f          f           

               f05829a6-0ed9-5dbb-4210-7779636ce96c RUH01_LOC 0     2  384        c1190a30-17de-4df3-a4f6-8fd16033e4aa f          f           

               e366356e-c2bd-9ab8-4d2a-b4f9625aab75 JUB03_LOC 0     3  384        1fbb3678-012a-4a9f-ac55-a17e535e3a0f f          f           

               9dfae479-44cc-6073-694b-b3072ce83c0d RUH04_LOC 0     4  384        53b75a89-6046-4523-abf3-2e105f48536f f          f           

               63ab932d-c78a-69e4-69be-3e538681bbe7 RUH02_LOC 0     5  0          943f6d6d-b552-4649-9164-3dfc0ae78958 f          f           

               6988c20a-f365-4f95-5d20-7c19fcb7416e RUH05_LOC 0     6  0          82a29544-33cd-45ce-9d74-8f09aeb0b8b1 f          f           

               6721be4b-dabb-3385-d693-d07b71094a73 RUH03_LOC 0     7  384        f8dd24d5-c092-4689-a16e-43844af87ef5 f          f           

               8d7f5704-f1d4-f978-170c-4d3dc88f24d9 JED01_LOC 0     8  384        73206578-d7e7-4f37-ade6-65bdc51134a6 f          f           

               206ded31-a998-82ee-cc06-e101b39da1c5 DMM02_LOC 0     9  384        8c39b4d3-1123-41b1-8a28-b89dcc2e85ab f          f           

• Yes my locations were configured with unlimitted Audio BW, so i set the BW to a value as you advised and will see whether it will reflect on the dashlet or not.

[ahmed-hassan1110]

and another question please, how can I get any file from any path on the server as it is linux based server ?

[Abhijit Singh Anand]

Hi Ahmed,

-- To get files, i use the SCP to transfer logs.

-- On windows you could use the WinSCP program.

-- The CPC-A server listens on port TCP 26 (not the default 22) for SSH connections.

Regards,

Abhi

===============

-- Some screenshots:

1.

2.

[Abhijit Singh Anand]

Hi Ahmed,

Regarding point no 5 "Monitoring Current Call Volume on gateway":

-- There's a "Calls Active" value available when you right click on the gateway and choose Performance.  "This value represents the number of streaming connections that are currently active (in use); in other words, the number of calls that actually have a voice path connected.".

More info on individual port monitoring available in this white paper:

Best Practices for Monitoring Cisco Unified Border Element with Cisco Prime Collaboration

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/netmgtsw/ps6504/ps6528/ps12363/white_paper_c11-726161.html#wp9000240

Regards,

Abhijit

[Abhijit Singh Anand]

Hi Ahmed,

Regarding point 7 "LDAP Auth Failing":

-- Please provide the following details:

1. The Distinguished Name for Admin.

2. The LDAP User Search Base you've configured.

Regards,

Abhi

[ahmed-hassan1110]

Hi Abhi,

     the LDAP integration issue was fixed using the solution provided in the below discussion and strangely this was not mentioned clearly on the administration guide of this product ??

https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/3979859#3979859

[Abhijit Singh Anand]

Hi Ahmed,

Regarding point no 4 "CUEs not showing up in the Service Health Summary":

The CUE isn't a part of the list of devices that would show up in that dashlet. CPC user guide would be updated to reflect this info.

Regards,

Abhijit

[dwayne rattan]

Hi

I know this is an old thread but hopefully I can get some help.

I am in the process have planning out a deployment of Prime Assurance and Analytics for Contact Center (PCCE).

We plan on installing Prime in our Data Center and using it multitent to monitor different customers.

My only concern is we plan on using meraki VPN to connect the tenants and use mask tranformation to mask the IP addresses of the tentents so they dont conflict with our IP addresses. Is there anything I should look out for with this method. I am worried because I know Prime will have to discover devices to add to inventory and if the IP address masking would cause an issue.