Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 8.6(2) Upgrade

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7th October 2011

Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 8.6(2)

Nice little challenge if you’re upgrading any Cisco MCS7825H3 servers to CUCM 8.6(2) or indeed Unity Connection to the same release.

In a nutshell, the upgrade process converts the RAID on the server from hardware to software based and effectively results in a total reformat of the machine during the process. A few points about this:

  • You need to attach an external USB storage drive with a minimum size of 16GB (CUCM) or 128 GB (CUC) to the physical server. During the upgrade the server will dump off its current config to the USB drive and then import it after the format is complete.
  • The USB drive will be reformatted during the operation so beware!
  • Obviously this means that remote upgrades will not be possible, and physical access to the machine will be required.
  • Finally, as the server is formatted, you cannot switch back to the old version like you can on most other upgrades. The only way to revert the software is to reimage the entire server, and restore from DRS backup. Ouch!

A link the release notes is here which provides more details on the process.

Because of the RAID conversion, the process can take at least a couple of hours longer than previous upgrades.

Not as straight foward as other upgrades it is fair to say.

Barry Hesk

Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express 8.6 Announced

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On the 25th March 2011, Cisco Systems announced Communications Manager Express version 8.6. CUCME 8.6 runs on their Integrated Services Router (ISR) platforms and provides sophisticated telephony support for small to medium sized offices.

Version 8.6 is the latest version of what used to be called IOS Telephony Services (ITS). This release adds a number of new features and services including:

  • Support for iphone and iphone touch softphone client (providing telephony over WiFi)
  • Extension mobility support for SIP phones
  • Increased number of rules per translation rule (goes from 15 to 100)
  • Support for 7926 wireless phone (wireless handset with barcode scanner)
  • Support for native SSL VPN connections from some handset types including 7945,7965 and 7975

CUCME 8.6 doesn’t seem to be posted on CCO yet, so we’re not certain which version of IOS it will be aligned to. As soon as we have this information, we’ll post back here. Any queries, please either post a comment here, or contact us via the main www.intrinsic-comms.co.uk web site.

Update: CUCME 8.6 is aligned to IOS version 15.1(4)M.