Cisco Unity Connection 8.5 Installation Woes

by ·0 Comment

Aug 27 2011
It’s been brought to our attention that there are a number of issues relating to a new installation of Unity Connection 8.5. Various problems have been reported including the installation DVD failing a media check, the installation process hanging for 30 minutes or more, and various other crashes being reported.

We are currently trying to define a process for a smooth installation and will post back here when we’ve finished our testing. It may be worth going straight to the newest release – version 8.6, rather than going with 8.5.


This link gives a few more details.

Barry Hesk

RIM Announce MVS Version 5.1

by ·0 Comment

11 May 2011
RIM used this year’s Blackberry World Conference to announce MVS version 5.1. This is an update to the already Generally Available version 5.0 which brings Voice over WiFi support to Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express PBX platforms.

MVS Version 5.1 extends the PBX support to Avaya and Nortel PBX systems widening it’s appeal.

An interesting additional feature is the ability for the hand held to detect when it’s WiFi signal is weakening to the point of being unusable and warning the user before the call drops.

We’ll be testing version 5.1 and will report back here.

Barry Hesk

Well.. It’s happened already!

by ·0 Comment

09 May 2011
It’s happened a little quicker than we expected. One of our clients requested a new block of IP addresses from their ISP. Guess what, IPv6 addresses were allocated to them with the ISP saying that they didn’t have any IPv4 addresses left.

Fortunately, the client has equipment in the form of firewalls, IPS and routers that can all handle IPv6, however they are now asking serious questions about how IPv6 to IPv4 interworking is going to work.

Equally as fortunately, we’ve been preparing for this and can offer advice and guidance on what will, and won’t work. As we move forward, this is something that a lot of businesses, including ourselves, are going to have to consider.

Barry Hesk

Cisco Cius availability

by ·0 Comment

Cisco System announced their android tablet device – the Cius – getting on for a year ago. Since then, there’s been a lot of anticipation as to when they would start shipping. Particular interest was around the tight integration between the tablet and Cisco Unified Communications Manager which allows it to becoming a voice and video endpoint.

As of 6th April 2011, it looks like the general release is getting closer.

CRN report that the Cius is going to be made available through Cisco Master and Advanced Unified Communications partners first. According to the article, pricing is meant to be targeting sub $700 for volume purchases.

Details on the specification of the Cius are available here

We’ll do some more digging and let you know about concrete dates as soon as we can. We’d love to get our hands on a couple!

Cisco Catalyst 6500 VSS Supervisor Redundancy

by ·0 Comment

For┬áa few┬áyears, Cisco have been positioning the Cisco Catalyst 6500 VSS within the data centre. Whilst VSS does indeed have many positive benefits (for VSS think about stacking a pair of 6500s like you do with a pair of 3750s, it’s the same concept) – including allowing you to port channel your edge switches into both “sides” of the VSS. Spanning Tree is no longer┬ámandatory – as the edge switches are connected to a single logical switch and there are no loops.

At layer 3 again, things are simpler. No more HSRP/VRRP – as the two physical 6500s present themselves as a single logical device.

However, one of the major issues has always been the lack of support for dual supervisors within a single chassis. Initial and subsequent releases of VSS only supported a maxmium of one supervisor per chassis. Failure of that supervisor would take the whole chassis down; whilst the VSS would stay up, any device that was only attached to the failing side would lose network connectivity.

The good news: it seems that in the latest IOS version for the 6500 , this has been addressed:

Quad-Supervisor Uplink Forwarding on In-chassis Standby Supervisor Engines

As a personal opinion, I think a feature rename to “Dual Supervisor Redundancy” is required, but that’s just me! We’re in the process of testing this new feature, and we’ll let you know how we get on.