Ask the expert UC migration week jun 22 - 26

[Sudheer Kumar]

Hello,

This is Sudheer Kumar, TME, Collaboration Technology Group working on the VCS and Collab edge technology. I would be pleased to handle your questions on the VCS to UCM migration. Please do feel free to ask any clarifications or questions you may have.

[jdedell12]

When migrating from a VCS to Expressway can we just add the Expressway licenses or do we have to reinstall the software and then apply the Expressway licenses.  Have a few VCS C & E that need to be migrated to Expressway C & E.  Release levels will be staying the same.

Thanks

John

[Kevin Roarty]

Hi John,

This may be already obvious to you, but wanted to make sure the broader community is aware....

When migrating endpoints from VCS to UCM there is no rush to migrate the VCS to an Expressway.  The VCS is capable of providing Mobile & Remote Access (MRA), and also providing local (sip & H323) registrations and B2B calling concurrently.

MRA calls are not counted against traversal licenses (on VCS) or rich media session licenses (on Expressway), so there is no licensing benefit for MRA calls on Expressway compared to VCS.

This provides our customers the ability to keep the VCS in place and begin the migration of endpoints to UCM.

Many customers will eventually want to retire their aging VCS appliance and this is where they would install a new Expressway VM, or replace with a new CE500/CE1000 Expressway appliance.  We don't support the "cross-grade" of going from VCS to Expressway series (or the other direction), as there are some VCS features that are not supported in the Expressway series and we don't want to introduce any instabilities when going from one product series to the other.

-Kevin

[jdedell12]

Hi Kevin,

Oh understand this and explain this all the time to our customers.  All their endpoints are already registered to CUCM and they want to migrate their VCS to Expressways as they will be adding additional Expressways to their deployment and want all the same components for easier maintenance.  If they weren't adding addition Expressways to their other world wide locations they would stay on their VCS.  I am just wondering what has to be done to do this migration.  I know its the same software and when initially installed as it shows up as a VCS until the Expressway license keys are applied.  That is why I am wonder if I can just apply the Expressway license keys or do we have to reinstall?  They are on virtual servers so there is no need to change hardware.

Thanks

John

[Kevin Roarty]

Ok, glad to hear you are aware of the VCS and Expressway product line differences, and have been spreading the good word

The official answer is you should re-install, and start with a fresh pair of Expressways (I know, they still begin "life" as a VCS until the Expressway series key is installed).  This keeps the support contracts lined up, and avoids untested and unsupported cross-grade scenarios. 

I know one situation that we are concerned about is customer's losing visibility and control of local registration config and policy that is enabled/visible on VCS and disabled/hidden on the Expressway side.  If you build a new pair of Expressways it will not include local registrations, so you don't have to worry about any old config coming back to haunt you.

-Kevin

[skilambi]

Can we get input on this thread in terms of parallel expressway deployments for Jabber Guest, MRA, B2B? While it is clear that we cannot support MRA and JG on the same expressway, there seems to be confusion JG and B2B. It is somewhat connected to migration and turning on new services

Re: Jabber Guest and MRA

[Kevin Roarty]

Sure, happy to provide that detail.

As Srini mentioned, today with Expressway X8.5.x Jabber Guest and MRA cannot coexist on the same Expressway pair.  However, combining B2B (aka Open Video Federation) and Jabber Guest on the same Expressway pair is possible, and makes a lot of sense from a licensing and security perspective...see example #2 below.  I included example #1 as well since it shows the combination of several features on a single Expressway pair.

and here's the case for Jabber Guest...

[skilambi]

Thanks Kevin but the concerns then on that thread on ICE/STUN/TURN for JG causing issues with B2B isn't a problem? I am referring to Nick's concerns on that thread specifically with legacy Tandberg supporting it better vs current Cisco endpoints? Any TAC support issues?

Thanks for that slide especially the second one

Srini

[Kevin Roarty]

@Srini there were some conflicts involved with the TURN server (for Jabber Guest) breaking MRA for some endpoints.  And this is part of the reason why Guest and MRA are separated.  But I am not aware of any issues with B2B and Guest, it's a fully supported combination.

[skilambi]

Thanks Kevin

[rohith.ab]

Hi,

Migrating VCS to UCM, What all are the benefits we gets, how smooth will be the migration and Do you mean VCS is no more available in future (All these Expressway C, Expressway E, VCS C and VCS E are confusing)...

Currently we uses VCSC and VCSE for all Video device (Endpoints & Movi) registration, call routing and call policies. So what kind of configuration / design change you suggesting for us.

[Kevin Roarty]

@Rohith VCS is still available today, and the good news is it has been "inheriting" all the features we are adding to and marketing under the Expressway product line.

The benefits will vary depending on the nature of your organization's deployment, and specifically if you already have CUCM in place.  Here are a few benefits to consider 

•    option to have a single cluster for voice or video devices

•    Single point of Dial Plan Administration

•    Single Call Admission Control Domain

•    Geographic redundancy

•    Scale to 40k devices in single a cluster, with ability for 80k in a megacluster

•    Integrated provisioning, management, phonebooks, and conferencing

•    Flexible connectivity outside the private network for Video, Voice, and IM&P

•    Hunt Groups / Busy Lamp Fields / Call Forward All / Consultative Transfer / Ad Hoc Video Conferencing

•    Voice Mail indicator / Music on Hold / Announcements / Video Greetings

•    Shared Lines / Single Number Reach (SNR) / CTI Control

•    and the ability to scale, as the business grows, to larger deployments

[rohith.ab]

Thanks Kevin!!

[muazam ali]

Hi Sudheer,

I have VCS-E installed on VM, i want to migrate to Expressway-E virtual. i am looking for migration part numbers i can not find any thing.

on forums there  are part numbers available to migrate from HW to VM but not from VM to VM

[skilambi]

There is no migration here needed. You can install Expressway-C/E fresh on virtual machines. Only thing you have to do is move the traversal licensing on VCS-E to RMS on Expressway-E. See SKU below

R-VCS2EXPWY-E-K9 - migrating VCS-E Traversal session licenses

R-VCS2EXPWY-C-K9 - migrating the Microsoft Interoperability key.