Using SQL to Query SIP Trunks

This post is in response to a query I received on Twitter:

@ucguerrilla - Would you have a SQL query in your toolbox to list SIP trunks with ip address, or point me in the right direction?

This is an interesting question because the tables you need to look at may not be as obvious as seen with other queries where we need to join tables. So, let's take a look at what is involved with this query and possibly touch on some related queries.

Congratulations to the Cisco Designated VIPs - 2014

Cisco recently announced the new Designated VIPs for 2014. The Cisco Designated VIP program recognizes the top external individual contributors in Cisco's online communities, including the Cisco Learning Network (CLN), the Cisco Support Community (CSC), and the Cisco Developers Network (CDN). You can read all about the VIP program and discover the Cisco Support Community (CSC) here.

This is the fourth year for this program and I am happy to see the Cisco team running the program keeping it alive an well. The CSC is, without a doubt, the best online resource for getting support and information on Cisco technologies. The Cisco team that works behind the scenes of the CSC are an outstanding group of individuals who really care about establishing a robust and sustainable collaboration environment. 

The best news (from my point of view anyway) is that I was selected as a Cisco Designated VIP for 2014. I didn't make the cut for 2013 (I'd like to use my pursuit of the CCIE as an excuse, if you'll allow!) and it feels good to be back in that circle of outstanding talent. There are 36 VIPs this year! That is amazing and definitely demonstrates that the community is alive and well.

I'd also like to take a moment to congratulate the other designated VIPs. I am in great company and you all make me look good, keep it up because I need all the help I can get! I'd also like to thank a few of the VIPs for taking the time to help me out of a few jams. Thanks to Aaron, Anthony, Huff, Jonathan, Martin, Chris D., and of course my brother, David Hailey. 

While I am at it, hats off to my fellow Chesapeake NetCraftsmen colleagues Rick Burts and David Hailey for also making the cut. 

---

Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!

Unity Connection Design Guide Drops 90ms from Latency Budget

This is just a quick note concerning a documentation change in the Unity Connection Design Guides. A few days ago one of my teammates was working on a Unity Connection design for a customer and came across a change in the network requirements for clustering Unity Connection over the WAN. Apparently, Cisco modified the clustering requirements section in the Unity Connection Release 8x and Release 9x design guides. 

The bandwidth requirements remain the same as they were when 8x was released. However, the round trip time (RTT) requirements have changed from 150 ms to 60 ms. Which is quite a big jump. It looks like this change was made on August 29, 2013.

This is more than a little disconcerting because I was looking at the design guide in July and made design recommendations based on the previous RTT requirement. Fortunately, my customer's network can still accommodate the updated budget. But what if that wasn't the case and I had to make a major design change in the middle of the project? Or worse, what if I didn't go back to re-read the design guide and the customer ran into an issue? 

Basically, I would have been screwed. Again, I am fortunate that we are still within budget and that I generally pick the lowest common denominator for clustering over the WAN designs. Which, prior to August 29, 2013, was 80 ms RTT for CUCM clustering. Interestingly enough, UCCX clustering also has a 80 ms RTT budget. It is odd (to me) that Unity would drop below the 80 ms threshold. 

Last point of interest. The UC 9x SRND still states that the maximum Round Trip Time (RTT) budget is 150 ms. That is probably still there to keep things interesting for the operators in the field! Obviously, it is best to err on the side of caution and assume the SRND recommendation is no longer valid.

I tried to find more information to see why the sudden drop in RTT budget. I suspect there may be a defect or some other revelation. If anyone has more information please post a comment. I am genuinely curious.

---

Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!

CUCM 9.1(2) and the Jump Upgrade

As we move further down the road with Cisco UCM releases we are gifted with more and more "upgrade" variants. First came the Bridge Upgrade, followed by the Refresh Upgrade and it's counterpart the L2 Upgrade. Now we have the Jump Upgrade. These "Upgrades" are breeding like crazy but I guess variety is the spice of life. 

All of these upgrade methods serve a function and while I think Cisco's upgrade methodologies are overly clunky, the Jump Upgrade is a step (not a leap) in the right direction.

The CCIE WINS its Voice Back!

As noted in my blog entry "Cisco Needs Its Voice Back", Cisco announced the new CCIE Collaboration track blueprint on May 29th. The community of engineers that live and breath the Cisco UC/Collaboration portfolio were happy to see the CCIE Voice track evolve to the next level. This was welcome news because we (the engineers) have been doing UC/Collaboration for years and have been waiting for the IE track to catch up. 

Of course, the news came with a huge downside. The CCIE Voice certification was being retired and not renamed. IOW, all of the engineers who make the Cisco's UC/Collaboration solution what it is would be left behind.

Starting the day of the announcement, the CCIE Voice community and our supporters started to speak out against the change. We leveraged social media and Cisco's community portals to make our opinion heard. We started a petition to centrally document our position. Folks at the Cisco Partner Summit in Boston and the Cisco Collaboration 10 PBT in San Jose spoke out and gave our movement a face (or many faces?).

Today, Cisco demonstrated an outstanding level of integrity and commitment to their brand and our community. The official announcement is not out yet but Jim Duffy from Network World has reported that Cisco will be providing CCIE Voice engineers a reasonable migration path.  

Cisco's official statement:

We are listening to the feedback from our valued CCIE community, and will be adjusting the CCIE Collaboration requirements. As a quick preview of the evolution of the CCIE Collaboration certification, a current holder of the CCIE Voice designation will now be able to migrate to a CCIE Collaboration credential by taking the CCIE Collaboration written exam only. We appreciate all of the great feedback and patience of the community while we update our webpages to reflect this change. We will be communicating further details about this modification as soon as possible.

This is outstanding news for the CCIE Voice community.

Color Me Impressed

The original announcement came out on May 29th and within 24 hours we bore witness to the power of social media. When we started to push back I had no idea that we would get over 1,000 names on the change.org petition. I was floored to see a discussion thread on the topic in the PBT community reach 9,700 views (in a little over 48 hours). 

I am impressed by the fact that our community rallied behind a core message, kept things civil, and used positivity to move our message up the management chain within Cisco. Honestly, right now, at this moment I am pretty damn proud to be part of a community that refused to roll over, made a stand, and combined efforts to make sure our VOICE was heard.

I'd like to extend my humble appreciation and my respect to each and everyone of you who helped put this change into effect. I'd also like to give a nod to Cisco Systems for listening to their user and partner community. The level of integrity you have demonstrated here is inspirational. You have successfully reinforced my brand loyalty.

---

Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!

Where's The Video In the "New" CCIE Collaboration?

As noted in my blog entry "CCIE Needs Its Voice Back", Cisco recently announced a new CCIE track: CCIE Collaboration AND they announced they would be retiring the CCIE Voice. This means that all certified Voice IEs are also retired.

Over the past week, the Voice IE community has stepped up and made their "VOICE" heard. We have been active in Twitter, Facebook, the Learning Network, and several Cisco online communities. I have been wading through the various threads and noted that there is a common misconception from those that support the retirement of the Voice IE. That misconception takes various forms of the argument: CCIE Voice is just voice and the new exam is much more. One of the commonly quoted "NEW" technologies is video.

There are several people who have said that the new IE is more than voice because it adds video and this creates a whole new paradigm. I see this response and I am honestly a little confused. I look at the new blueprint and the new equipment list and I have to ask: "Where is the video?"

CCIE Needs its Voice Back

May 29, 2013 marks the day that Cisco announced the new CCIE Collaboration track. For many existing voice CCIEs, this was a welcome change to the blue print as it lined up with what we really do. We were excited about the blue print change and then we read the catch: 

"CCIE Voice will be retiring and the new CCIE Collaboration will become the standard for telecom, unified communications, and video professionals". 

What does this mean? It means that if you have a CCIE Voice, you will remain a CCIE Voice and if you want to be recognized as a CCIE Collaboration you have to go through the whole lab process again. 

Needless to say people will pitch a fit over such news. I don't think anyone (especially Cisco) is surprised by that. There are a lot of unhappy campers in the Cisco "Collaboration" world today. I can't speak for all of them but I can lay out my argument for why I believe Cisco made the wrong decision.

CCIE Voice Blue Print Change and a New Name: CCIE Collaboration

Today I was happily plodding my way through developing a Jabber Deployment Guide for one of my customers and my Mac starts a buzz'n with new information concerning the CCIE Voice track. As folks pursuing the CCIE Voice know the current blue print (v.3.0) has been around for a  long time. IE voice candidates have been waiting with anticipation for the next blue print announcement. 

Today (about 20 min ago) I heard a rumor that our wait is over. I don't have details yet but what I have heard from two reliable sources is that the CCIE Voice is going to be renamed to CCIE Collaboration. This updated CCIE track will be available starting November 13, 2013.

Details are sparse at the present moment. A quote on the INE blog site says that the new blueprint will include voice, video, and IM/Presence. I'd expect SIP will be a central theme and I sure as hell hope that Frame-Relay gets dropped (I'd be surprised if it didn't). 

Traditionally, Cisco offers lab seats for 6 months under a newly retired blue print. I assume this policy will continue with the new CCIE Voice, errh Collaboration blue print coming to light. My advice? Don't freak and if you have been putting off picking a date for your IE voice exam, schedule it. Then get back to focusing on doing the job you set out to do. Don't let this throw you off your game.

Update (5/29/2013):

The rumor was confirmed and there is a new CCIE Collaboration track. The CCIE Voice track has been expired and any existing Voice IE remains a Voice IE. Cisco's current position is they will not rename the IE. You can get the full program information here.

Timeline for Exam Changes


CCIE Voice
The last day to take the CCIE Voice Written exam is November 20, 2013.
The last day to take the CCIE Voice Lab exam is February 13, 2014.

CCIE Collaboration
The CCIE Collaboration Written exam availability begins November 21, 2013.
The CCIE Collaboration Lab exam availability begins February 14, 2014.

Does My IE Voice Become an IE Collaboration?

No. Your IE Voice remains active and you can keep renewing your certification using Cisco's standard process. But the voice is retired. I don't agree with Cisco's decision to simply retire the IE voice. I believe it should have been a simple rename akin to how they handled the CCIE Communications and Services to CCIE Service Provider. My argument can be found here.

---

Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!

The Cisco MCS Days are Numbered

This is probably not new news for Cisco UC/Collaboration partners. Especially those that are even remotely active in the Collaboration Community. Cisco recently announced the End of Sale / End of Life for Cisco 7800 series Media Convergence Servers (MCS). Originally, Cisco was planning to have the End of Sale (EoS) date milestone occur December 2013. However, Cisco has moved this milestone up to October 2013 as customers (and I assume distributors) have been stocking up. 

It is even possible that Cisco will sell out of all the MCS servers prior to the October EoS milestone. It is reminiscent of ticket scalping in the real world and stocking up on bottled water in a post-apocalyptic fictional drama. Makes me wonder if MCS server prices from certain distributors will sky rocket after October. I guess it doesn't matter. 

What does matter is that there won't be another generation of MCS servers. The migration plan is to go to virtual machines. After the EoS milestone, new purchases of UCM 8.x/9.x must go one of several virtualization paths. This can make things interesting for integrators and customers starting after Cisco Live in June (where I expect there will be some more announcements that lay out the 12-18 month roadmap).

Most of my customers are already going the virtual route and my team and I have been doing UC VMs for years now. However, I do have a couple of customers that have organizational obstacles which puts them in a position of saying they won't virtualize their UC environment. Fortunately, they are in the minority but every customer is important and this recent Cisco announcement should make for some interesting conversations. Still, I think this is right path for Cisco and I am actually looking forward to saying bye-bye to the MCS platform. Of course, that won't happen over night. Unfortunately. 

---

Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!

Multi-Step Upgrade: DRS Tip

I am in the process of doing a multi-step upgrade from 6.1 to 8.6 and I figured that while my DRS restore was chugging along I'd take a quick moment to post a tip to the ol' blog. On this particular project we are pulling a DRS backup from the production system and taking it off site to one of our labs. From there, I am doing a restore to a MCS host I have in the lab and stepping the UCM publisher through the upgrade process. 

There is a teeny weeny hurdle you could run into during this process. Particularly when you are creating a DRS backup device to take the newly upgrade image back to the production environment. 

If you are doing something like what I describe above and are seeing an error message on the DRS Backup Device page that says something like <spicolivoice> "Duuude, I'd like to help ya out brah but the Local Agent has bailed on us...." </spicolivoice> then I may have the fix you need.

Unlocking Jabber Video Sign-In Preferences for Jabber.com

Recently, I was doing some testing with the Jabber Video for TelePresence (Movi) client. I was all set to go. I had my Jabber client loaded on my iPad, my VCS up and humming (loudly, I might add), and the Jabber Video client running on my MBP. I wanted to add another client to the mix, so I figured I would use the Jabber Video client on my iMac. This client was configured to use the free Jabber service (jabber.com) and I found out that I was unable to edit the server configuration. 

I found an easy (albeit unsupported) fix to the problem and I figured it was worth sharing.

Congratulations to the Cisco Designated VIPs 2013

I just wanted to take a moment to recognize some folks who work hard to help their fellow IT professionals out of some interesting jams. The Cisco Support Community (CSC, formerly NetPro) recently announced the 2013 Cisco Designated VIPs.

The Cisco Designated VIP program recognizes the top external individual contributors in Cisco's online communities, including the Cisco Learning Network (CLN), the Cisco Support Community (CSC), and the Cisco Developers Network (CDN). Cisco Designated VIPs are recognized by their peers for their expertise and tireless contributions. Cisco Designated VIPs are generous, credible, and accessible to their peers and their abundant participation is vital to community success.  With the Cisco Designated VIP program, Cisco formally recognizes the positive, valuable influence our top individual members exert on the communities overall.

This is the third year for this program and I am happy to see the Cisco team that runs the program keeping it alive an well. The CSC is, without a doubt, the best online resource for getting support and information on Cisco technologies. 

Of course, this is the first year that I am not on the VIP list. I guess we'll have to remediate that oversight next year! To Dan Bruhn, Litsa Pitsillidou, and all of the other Cisco folks that keep the community alive (sorry if I don't mention you by name) -- keep up the outstanding work! I may still see you at Cisco Live and I will still want a shirt ;-)

---

Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!