Merging two clusters into one

[Andrey Chertolyas]

Hello,

We have two 8.x clusters (CUCM/CUC/UCCX) which are going to be consolidated and upgraded to v10.5. Is there a way to merge the configurations? Is it possible to use PCD for such a task? 

[Manish Gogna]

Hi Andrew,

There is no option to merge the configuration of two clusters using PCD or any other method. You can use Bulk Administration tool to move some configuration from one cluster to another if they are running the same version though.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/bat/8_6_1/bat-861-cm/t13cnftl.html

Manish

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[Andrey Chertolyas]

Just like I thought. So I assume the easiest way to consolidate two clusters on a different server with the following upgrade is as follows:

1. Migrate one of existing 8.x servers to a different VM using PCD

2. Merge the configuration from the second cluster using bulk tool

3. Upgrade the cluster to 10.5 using PCD

What do you think? I have got no experience with PCD, just assuming that this way would be fine.

[Jaime Valencia]

I suggest you review the PCD documentation, the migration means you'll move the info from the old CUCM into a new 10.x cluster, not that it will move a VM to other server.

[William Bell]

Close. I would suggest one modification: Upgrade/Migrate one of the existing 8x clusters to 10.5. And then look at bulk export/import methods to get data from the other cluster. This is also a good time to consolidate and optimize things. But maybe that goes to style points. 

Be sure to take into account other application dependencies. Particularly during the window between the 10.5 upgrade of Cluster A and the migration of data from Cluster B. You will need to deal with the SBD/ITL stuff. Which is easy but will kill you if you don't plan accordingly. Also, I would not do the upgrade for Cluster A and migration of Cluster B in the same change window or weekend. 

A maneuver like this is all about the planning. There is no single tool that will make it happen. I have done plenty of data migrations and upgrades and cluster consolidations. If you have a good plan then you will be right as rain. If you don't have a good plan then you are going to have a rough month (or more).

-Bill

[Andrey Chertolyas]

Hi William,

Thank you for your answer. I have already chosen the way of manual migration - installing new clusters from scratch with following manual configuration. The only bulk migration I used was phones migration, all other routing stuff has been re-designed and configured manually. I've decided to do it manually after a couple of days of fighting with PCD trying to migrate 8.x to 10.x and getting some critical error after 5 hours of migration two times in a row.

Regarding the ITL stuff - I am going to use bulk certificates migration, since both old and new clusters will be running at the same time.