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!

CCIE Voice Lab Strategy Part 2 - The Read Through

What started as a single blog entry quickly became two and after finishing Part 2, I am fairly certain there will be one or two more entries to round out this "thought". Before diving into this entry, I'd recommend taking a look at Part 1: Formulate Your Strategy. 

In Part 2, I am going to talk about my personal strategy a little more and focus on the Read Through phase of taking the lab exam. Not because I think my Read Through is all that fascinating. I just feel that by talking about the Read Through I can further illustrate my actual strategy. 

CCIE-V Lab Strategy Part 1 - Formulate Your Strategy

I know what you are thinking, yet another blog on CCIE-V test taking strategy. Well, of course I would do that. It is almost a right of passage. An obligatory first step for any who have passed the exam. It is a glorious sign that you have arrived! Right? Not really. It is actually a sign that you have nothing better to do and are struggling with how to burn through the huge amount of free time that now lay in front of you! 

So, yes I am going to talk about test taking strategy. This started as just a single blog entry and then I realized it was becoming a little too long for just one blog. I wouldn't really go as far as saying this will be a series but it is certainly going to be more than one entry. 

For part 1, I wanted to walk through a couple strategies I came across as I was trying to determine my own path. I also want to discuss some of the factors you should account for when coming up with your own, personal strategy. You see, I believe that a well-prepared candidate will have a strategy that is unique to them. Even if that strategy borrows heavily from other approaches. You don't want to blindly follow someone else's strategy just because they appear to know what they are talking about. Listen, learn, and form your own opinion. 

Using SQL to Look at EM Profile MOH Sources

In this installment of the SQL query series I wanted to actually explore a request that came by way of the Cisco Support Community. The scenario/question:

What would the query be to obtain the MOH source for DN's that are assigned to EM Profiles?

The individual posing the question was primarily interested in listing MOH sources for directory numbers associated with Extension Mobility profiles. The query to grab this data is a simple variation on a query I presented a few months ago in the blog entry: Using SQL to Look at MOH Source Configurations.

Read the News Today, Oh Boy! I Passed the CCIE in Cisco RTP

Yesterday, I sat for the CCIE Voice lab in RTP.  At 0300 EDT my mailbox received the grade notice. A few hours later I actually opened the email and followed the link to get my exam report. 

For some reason I stared at the screen for what seemed forever before it sunk in that I passed this beast. Though, in a way I am still numb. 

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.

CCIE-V "I Shoulda' Checked That" Tip #5: Dial-Peer Zero is Bad Like Vad

This is the fifth installment in what I am calling the "I Shoulda' Checked That" series. The inspiration for this series is covered in the first installment. To save readers some time, I am going to jump right into things. On this go around, I am going to discuss the fifth tip of the series: Don't Forget Dial-Peer 0.