Cisco Mobile and Remote Access Troubleshooting Basic Connectivity

The Cisco Mobile and Remote Access (MRA) feature is a "client edge" solution that allows external software and hardware clients to register to enterprise Cisco Unified Communication (UC) solutions without requiring a VPN. Like most things, there are a lot of moving parts working together to create a relatively seamless user experience. And, like most things, the first time you deploy MRA there are a few "gotchas" that can eat up a significant amount of troubleshooting time. 

This blog entry captures procedures I use when troubleshooting or validating a MRA deployment. These procedures can be used to validate the initial deployment or they can be used to troubleshoot connectivity problems for an individual user.

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.

Centrally Refreshing Jabber Contact Photos in MRA Deployments

I have assisted several customers with Jabber deployments lately. Almost all of them driven by the desire to implement Mobile and Remote Access (MRA). Provisioning MRA is not the topic of this article. Instead, I wanted to touch on an operational task that has annoyed me for some time. 

The issue is with caching of Jabber contact photos. Windows and Mac Jabber clients are coded to cache various things. I assume this is an effort to minimize network transactions and optimize client performance. One of the elements cached are contact photos. I have no problem with caching but, in my experience, the issue is that old contact photos tend to be permanently cached and I can't easily (i.e. centrally) force a refresh. 

I played around with some options and found a method that worked in some test environments and my own production environment. Maybe this will work for others. I would be interested in hearing about other options. Please use the comments to enlighten me and others!

Heads Up, Issues with UCM SIP Processing on 10.5(2)SU2 and 11.0

Users that recently downloaded Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) 10.5(2)SU2 [10.5(2.12900-14] or CUCM 11.0 [11.0(1.10000-10)] may have received an email from Cisco alerting them that these versions have been deferred due to some serious defects. If so, then good for you. If you ignored the e-mail then you receive the wag of the finger.

Maybe, you are managing a system affected by the defects we are going to discuss but you weren't the one to download the files. Well, in that case, you wouldn't have been alerted. In all cases, if you have installed 10.5(2)SU2 or 11.0 and are running SIP then you want to heed the warnings and look at applying the appropriate fixes. 

Cisco TelePresence Endpoints and IP Address Dialing with CUCM

Cisco has been steering customers and partners to centralize all call processing on the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM). This includes video or we can call it telepresence, if you prefer. For deployments where the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS) is in play with CUCM, Cisco has some general design guidance that is slanted to registering Cisco telepresence endpoints on the CUCM. The VCS being relegated to legacy endpoint registration, protocol interworking, and facilitating firewall traversal.

This is all well and good but there are gaps. One of those gaps is supporting the ability to dial an H.323 party by IP address. Dialing by IP address refers to the ability of an endpoint to set up a video session with a remote party by simply using the IP address. This method is natively supported by H.323 devices. SIP devices use a URI format for "dialing". While SIP URIs can certainly use an IP address as the suffix, that is not the focus here.

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.

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Finding Orphaned User Device Profiles for EM

This installment of the SQL query series is a response to a question posed by a reader. The reader posted a comment on the blog entry: Using SQL to Validate CUCM Extension Mobility. The reader asked if it was possible to find "orphaned" extension mobility profiles using SQL? 

This is definitely possible and is actually pretty straightforward. 

Enabling Local IP Address Dialing on a Cisco VCS Control

I recently fielded a question about IP address dialing and the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS). It reminded me of a video design I put together a while ago and I have been meaning to put some more video / telepresence content on the blog. To that end, I figured I would share my approach to enabling IP address dialing with the Cisco VCS. 

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.

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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.

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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. 

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Provisioning Cisco Jabber for iPad on the VCS Starter Pack

Cisco just released VCS release X7.2.1, which contains some third-party software updates and a handful of bug fixes. That's great but hardly noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that X7.2.1 adds support for the Cisco Jabber for iPad client on the VCS Starter Pack Express.

A few months ago, I posted a write up on provisioning the Cisco Jabber for iPad client with CUPS/CUCM and another one covering provisioning the client for hosted services like WebEx Connect. I guess the next logical step would have been to discuss provisioning with the VCS+TMS. I'll have to come back to that one. For this blog post, I am going to focus on provisioning the Jabber client with the Cisco VCS Starter Pack Express.

Cisco Jabber for iPad Pt 2 Individual Accounts and Hosted Services

Last month I posted a blog on provisioning Cisco Jabber for iPad to use CUPS and CUCM. For part deux, I wanted to switch gears and provide a walk through for provisioning the Jabber client to use hosted services for Presence and video. 

Namely, I am going to discuss using Cisco WebEx Connect for IM/Presence and Cisco's Jabber Video for TelePresence (or as I like to call it, @jabber.com). It is worth noting that we are going to explore the "Personal Account" provisioning track here. That means discussion of WebEx Connect with CUCM or Cisco VCS won't be front and center. That will come later.

Cisco Jabber for iPad Pt 1 Provisioning CUPS and CUCM

As noted in my blog on Cisco Jabber for iPad Now Has Video, the latest version of Cisco Jabber for iPad was released on July 11, 2012. This version of Jabber not only adds video capabilities that leverage the built-in cameras on the iPad2 and 3rd generation iPad, but it also combines call processing, presence, and IM functionality into a unified client. 

In this series on provisioning, I am going to go through the various provisioning options for the Cisco Jabber for iPad. We'll initially start with the basics of getting the client communicating with various back-end services by using the Cisco Unified Presence Server and Cisco Unified Communications Manager integration options.

Cisco Jabber for iPad Now Has Video

I know there are a fair number of people out there in Cisco land that have been waiting for Cisco to bring video capabilities to the iPad via their Jabber client. Well, the wait is finally over. 

On July 11, 2012 the Cisco Jabber for iPad client appeared in the AppStore. The new Jabber client (yes, it is a 1.0 release) is an application that provides instant messaging (IM), video and voice calling, corporate directory, and presence all in one client. 

Querying IP Phone Service Subscriptions

In this installment of the SQL query series I wanted to explore IP phone service subscriptions. An administrator provisions IP phone services on the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM). To leverage these services on an IP phone, the phone must subscribe to the appropriate service, with the appropriate parameters. On this initial foray into the IP phone service arena, we will focus on reporting on service subscriptions.

I typically leverage this type of query when doing deployments or upgrades. For deployments, I have had instances where I needed to double check how devices or device profiles were provisioned. For upgrades where we are migrating to a new CUCM version, we'll use queries like this to prepare for the data move. We also query phone services when doing clean up.

Troubleshooting: Protocol Captures on Cisco VCS

This is just a quick write up on how to pull network traces from the Cisco Video Communications Server (VCS). As anyone who has been in the business of integrating solutions in existing networks knows, having the ability to pull protocol traces goes a long way to streamlining the troubleshooting process. Deploying a VCS is no different.