CUCM Backup / VM Cloning?

[Arturo Jr. Pacardo]

Hello everyone,

Good day!

I have a question regarding our Call Manager BE6K 9.1.

Our client wants to have a fail-safe if ever our CUCM (publisher) fails or shutsdown due to various reasons.

I was thinking of making a "subscriber" for this, to replicate the publishers config and by my research I learned that the "subscriber" can hold the phone operations if ever the publisher is off.

Can anyone confirm this?

Now, the main question is regarding the reply of our system admin to our client, can somebody explain it to me.

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Client:

Also, we need a backup once all of this is completed. Can we clone the VMs and configure it as standby ?

Sys Admin:

The backup copy is saved in the Data Center PC. Frequent manual backups are needed to have a copy of the CUCM config on standby.

For the VM, yes, we can copy it but we cannot assure that it will run on a different server. Because the VM is pre-installed on the BE6K from the factory.

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Any insights on this one would be greatly appreciated, also, if anyone could suggest other alternatives that would suffice the client's request would be welcomed.

Thank you so much and God bless everyone!

Kind regards,

Art

[Manish Gogna · Accepted solution]

Hi Art,

You may deploy more than two nodes when using BE6K  so long as you do not exceed the maximum user and device counts that is supported on this deployment model. So, you can add a subscriber and it will be able to process the calls even if the Publisher is down.

CUCM Backups are only valid if they are taken through the DRS BAckup and Restore method. Cloning as such is not supported.

HTH

Manish

[Manish Gogna]

Here is one of the doc that provides additional details

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-36584

Manish

[Arturo Jr. Pacardo]

Hi Manish,

Thank you so much!

Ok, for clarity's sake, on our current situation, can we apply/configure a subscriber? and the "subscriber" method would suffice the client's request for a fail-safe?

To be specific, if ever something happens to the publisher, either corruption or failure to operate, the phone operations would still be up and running because the subscriber can handle them, the same way as the publisher does?

If so, would you kindly provide us instructions or a link for a step by step procedure of configuring a "subscriber" on BE6K 9.1?

Lastly, when we are to configure a subscriber, would there be a downtime for the server? I mean, will it affect the phone operations? Should the CUCM be powered-off when configuring? Will a server restart be needed? Because we might need to apply it after business hours.

Again, thank you so much Manish!

I know you also helped me before and I want to thank you again

Cheers,

Art

[Manish Gogna · Accepted solution]

Hi Art,

A subscriber can be built just like any other callmanager and while it is being installed it does not affect the operations in any way. Once installed you should ideally have the phones registered with the subscriber and have the Publisher as the backup server in the 'Callmanager group' setting of device pool. So, even if the Pub fails the phones will continue to recieve calls. Also, if something happens to the sub then the phones can failover to the Pub. The Pub will continue to function normally while you are installing the sub, the only downtime would be a reset of the phones when you add the Sub in the callmanager group and reset the phones to download the new configuration file, but it can be planned to be done during off hours.

Manish

[Arturo Jr. Pacardo]

Hello Manish,

Copy that sir!

Thanks.

Kind regards,

Art

[Chris Deren · Accepted solution]

Manish,

This is actually not true, as starting with CUCM 8.6 if you add subscriber to the cluster all phones will get reset (nice feature enhancement :-( ). So, adding subs should be done during maintenance window.

HTH,

Chris

[Manish Gogna]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your inputs. Is there a specific enhancement for this behavior and does it apply to only the BE6K platform? If the phones are not associated to the new subscriber in any way before we add it to the callmanager group, at what stage do they reset?

Manish

[Chris Deren]

This was sneaked in CUCM version 8.6, so if you are installing CUCM (BE6K uses the same CUCM) newer than that you will run into it.

Chris

[Sean K]

Hi Manish

Is this true of the BE5K as well?

I have a BE5K v8.6.2 (but only one of them, on a 7828-i5), and I would like to test recoving my backups to a secondary site using VMware as the target platform. Not sure what the technical and licensing implications of this are though - I'd hope that a "standby" configuration wouldn't need extra licensing, but that might be wrong.

Thanks

Sean

[Manish Gogna]

Hi Sean,

Unfortunately, BE5k doesn't support CUCM redundancy.

Manish

[Chris Deren]

Sean,

BE5K is EOL and should be upgraded to BE6K. Is your BE6K even virtulized? I did not think that was supported, so you are probably just running 2 apps on the bare metal server, which means no VMware features would be applicable.

HTH,

Chris