A couple of questions about upgrading CUCM to 10.5

jonathan.dixon · ‎11-16-2014

Hi All,

I’m looking at a couple of upgrades for customers to 10.5, I’ve watched “BRKUCC-2011 - Best Practices for Migrating Previous Versions of CUCM to version 10.5.” - https://www.ciscolive.com/online/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=78758 which was very helpful. I have a couple of questions if anyone has done this?

When upgrading I believe it’s best practise (and required when going to 10.5 for the network card change) to edit the VM settings of the existing guest and update the guest OS setting, etc. to match what’s in the 10.5 .ova. At what point in the upgrade should this be done? If I’m going from 8.6 to 10.5 do I do this before the upgrade to 10.5 or when the upgrade has completed?
When upgrading, if I go through multiple versions eg. from 8.6 to 9.1 then 9.1 to 10.5 will licensing still be in the 60 day grace period? If I go from 8.6 to 9.1 then I’d expect 60 days grace, but if I then go from 9.1 to 10.5 do I still have 60 days grace to make changes or will it go into no provisioning immediately?
During the Live session a ‘New association tool – slated for Q4 CY 2014 release’ was mentioned. This is to make the user <-> phone association process easier if it hasn’t been done already. Has anyone seen this or heard when it will be available?

Thanks,

Jonathan

jonathan.dixon · ‎11-23-2014

I ended opening up a case with the PDI helpdesk on this one, here are their answers.

i) When upgrading I believe it’s best practise (and required when going to 10.5 for the network card change) to edit the VM settings of the existing guest and update the guest OS setting, etc. to match what’s in the 10.5 .ova. At what point in the upgrade should this be done? If I’m going from 8.6 to 10.5 do I do this before the upgrade to 10.5 or when the upgrade has completed?

Udhay : This has to be done before the upgrade. As per the below upgrade guide for CUCM 10.x , it's covered in pre-upgrade tasks:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/upgrade/10_0_1/CUCM_BK_U4214F9D_00_upgrade-guide-cucm-100.pdf

Please refer to the section "Change Virtual Machine Configuration Specifications "

ii) When upgrading, if I go through multiple versions eg. from 8.6 to 9.1 then 9.1 to 10.5 will licensing still be in the 60 day grace period? If I go from 8.6 to 9.1 then I’d expect 60 days grace, but if I then go from 9.1 to 10.5 do I still have 60 days grace to make changes or will it go into no provisioning immediately?

Udhay : When you upgrade from 8.5 to 9.1 or from 9.1 to 10, you will have a grace period of 60 days to get the licenses and during this grace period, you will be able to register devices without any limit( ofcourse the server /cluster limit would apply) and all features will function as normal, however, once the grace period is over and the licenses are still not installed, then the CUCM will function as usual but you won't be able to make any changes e.g device addition / deletion, call routing will just work fine.

iii) During the Live session a ‘New association tool – slated for Q4 CY 2014 release’ was mentioned. This is to make the user <-> phone association process easier if it hasn’t been done already. Has anyone seen this or heard when it will be available?

Udhay : I did not find any information of the "new association tool", probably it's not released yet, I would suggest you to contact your Cisco Accounts team to get further help on this as unfortunately,PDI does not provide information about release dates for applications.However, I am not sure if you have tried Bulk administration tool(BAT) to do user-device association which is a fast and easy way.Here is BAT guide for your reference:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/bat/10_0_1/CUCM_BK_CDB9A6A4_00_cucm-bulk-administration-guide-100/CUCM_BK_CDB9A6A4_00_cucm-bulk-administration-guide-100_chapter_010010.html

chandramauliks · ‎12-11-2014

Hi Jonathan

Useful info

Im in a similar situation with this 8.6 to 10.5. Lots of conflicting information on the VM settings change

How did your upgrade activity go? is that complete. If yes.Im more interested in steps for VM changes you mentioned in Question 1

will I still keep the number of Vdisk as 2 which was created in 8.6 or i just change it to 1 x 110Gb?

After upgrade did the existing configs automatically made available in 10.5 or did you do DRS restore of configs? once i complete all nodes in my cluster

Thanks

Chandramauli

jonathan.dixon · ‎12-11-2014

Hi Chandramauli,

No this upgrade won't happen until the new year.

Have you considered using PCD to do a migration (depending on if you have spare resources to create more VMs and appropriate VMware licensing), there is a bit more downtime involved if you stay on the same IP addresses but there are less steps involved, no clearing of common space, stretching disks, no having to load the keys .cop file, no modifying VM settings etc...

Regards,

Jonathan