Virtualización con UCS

8/18/2019 Virtualización con UCS

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Virtualizing Your

Cisco UnifiedCommunications

with Cisco UCS


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Copyright ©2011 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 2

Virtualizing Your Cisco Unified

Communications with Cisco UCSJeffrey W. Hall, VCI, VCP4, CCSI, CCNP Voice, CCNP Security, DatacenterSupport Specialist, CCIP, CCDP, CCNP, MCT, MCITP, MCSE

IntroductionDatacenters can be really interesting places to see.

Whether your datacenter looks disastrous, like this:

…it is clear that the traditional datacenter design methodologies are outdated. Between having dozens of racks

filled with hundreds and even thousands of servers, many thousands of feet in cabling, or the out-of-control heat-

ing and cooling costs that we’re incurring, there has to be a better way of doing things.

Do you manage a complex Cisco Unified Communications environment? If you do, then you’re already fully

aware of how sensitive real-time traffic, such as voice and video, are to such things as latency, jitter, and packet

loss. Now, throw this system into the same infrastructure with the rest of your data, and you don’t always have

the best recipe for success. Sure, there are tactics that we implement for Unified Communications, such as dedi-

cated voice VLANs and Quality of Service mechanisms like Low Latency Queuing. However, at the end of the day,

all of these packets still have to compete with the many other types of traffic in your datacenter infrastructure;

and let’s face it, a simpler architecture is a faster and more easily managed architecture.

This white paper highlights the advantages of virtualizing your Cisco Unified Communications using the Cisco Uni-

fied Computing System (UCS). To fully appreciate these benefits, we’ll start with a couple of short primers on the

Cisco UCS and Unified Communications.

or nice and neat, like this...


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The Unified Computing SystemThe Cisco UCS is truly a “unified” architecture

that integrates three major datacenter tech-

nologies into a single, coherent system:

1. Computing

2. Network

3. Storage

Instead of being simply the next generation

of blade servers, the Cisco UCS is an innova-

tive architecture designed from scratch to be

highly scalable, efficient, and powerful with

one-third less infrastructure than traditional

blade servers. The net effect of this is dramat-

ically reduced power and cooling costs and

easier, centralized management.

The Cisco UCS is made up of the following major components:

1. Cisco 6100-series Fabric Interconnects

2. Cisco UCS 5100-series Blade Server Enclosures

3. Cisco 2100-series Fabric Extenders

4. Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers

5. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-mounted Servers

6. Cisco UCS Converged Network Adapters (CNA)

7. Cisco UCS Manager

Gone are the days of disparate (siloed) systems all across the datacenter with their many different management

tools and networking infrastructure. Here to stay is a unified architecture that offers these key features:

1. Hardware State Abstraction

With Cisco UCS, we can use “service profiles” that represent the physical characteristics of a server that make

it unique from other servers (MAC address, WWN, UUID, BIOS, boot order, etc.). We are then able to attach

these service profiles to individual servers. So, as long as the individual blade servers are booting from either a

PXE Server or doing a SAN boot, we can achieve a stateless server capability by moving the identity of a server

(profile) to any physical blade server when needed.

2. Unified Fabric that provides “Lossless” connectivity

Within the UCS architecture, a single cable is used for all signaling transmissions, regardless of whether it’s data or

storage. Additionally, through the use of Priority-Based Flow Control (PFC), we can replicate the same capability

within Ethernet that Fiber Channel already has of ensuring that frames are never dropped.


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3. Virtualized adapters

Virtualization is a key enabling technology within the Cisco UCS architecture, and the network adapters within

the individual servers are no exception. While there are multiple adapter models, there are specific PCIe adapters

within the C-Series servers and mezzanine adapters within the B-Series blade servers that allow for multiple virtual

network adapters (vNICs) to be present over the single physical network adapters. This capability allows for the

“stateless” capability that was previously mentioned.

4. Expanded memory

One of the key performance enhancements in Cisco UCS is the ability to virtualize the physical memory installed in

the server DIMM slots. This virtualization allows us to increase the effective capability of the physical memory to

four times the original capacity. This is a significant technology, since it allows us to use cheaper memory and still

achieve a greater memory footprint.

5. Unified management

The Cisco UCS Manager (UCSM) allows for many blade servers and their related networking and storage con-

nectivity, regardless of whether it’s Ethernet or Fiber Channel, to be managed within a single and very intuitiveGraphical User Interface (GUI). Additionally, a very powerful Command-Line Interface (CLI) is provided as is an

XML Application Programming Interface (API). These management capabilities provide a very powerful and

centralized management functionality that is simply not present in other vendor solutions.

Cisco Unified Communications Primer Modern business communication capabilities have evolved tremendously from the days of analog and digital

telephony. Back then, we relied on Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) located physically at each site to control

the analog and digital signaling for local phones and other devices, such as fax machines and overhead paging

solutions. Likewise, the PBX also defined and controlled the signaling of external trunks to the telephony carrier’s

central office (CO).

Today, the implementation of server-based solutions based on the TCP/IP protocol suite has become standard

practice. These newer IP-based PBXs fulfill exactly the same role as traditional PBXs by housing the dial plan;

identity of endpoints, gateways, trunks, etc.; device features like Call Park, pickup, Music on Hold (MoH), confer-

encing, etc.; and other communications configurations.

While the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) is at the heart of Cisco’s UC design, there are many

additional components that greatly increase the organization’s capabilities to stay connected.

For example, a few of these additional server-based resources include:

1. Cisco Unified Presence

This feature-rich UC component uses standards-based protocols such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and

the Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (XCP) to work with a range of native and third-party client ap-

plications.


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Users are able to initiate such activities as instant messaging, presence, click to call, phone control, voice, video,

visual voicemail, and web collaboration. Cisco Unified Presence lays the foundation to deliver enterprise IM and

Cisco rich, network-based, presence-enabled collaboration capabilities.

2. Cisco Unity Connection

Cisco Unity Connection is a Linux-based appliance that provides a robust unified messaging platform for Cisco’sUnified Communications suite of products. This product allows the user to access and manage voice messages

in a variety of ways, using his/her email inbox, web browser, Cisco Unified IP Phone, smartphone, Cisco Unified

Personal Communicator, etc.

Additionally, Unity Connection provides speech recognition features for mobile users, ensuring the user can safely

and quickly manage and access voicemail while driving, or otherwise preoccupied.

3. Cisco Unified Contact Center

This powerful set of products comes in two variations:

1. Enterprise – Delivers intelligent contact routing, call treatment, network-to-desktop computer telephony

integration (CTI), and multichannel contact management for large-scale enterprise deployments

2. Express -- Designed for midmarket, enterprise branch, or corporate departments requiring a sophisti-

cated customer interaction management solution for up to 400 agents

Cisco’s UC products have evolved over the years from Windows applications installed on Microsoft Server plat-

forms to predominantly appliance-based solutions installed on Linux platforms. The included system, network,

and user features have increased steadily with each release, but the most dramatic improvements can be seen in

the most recent version of the Cisco UC, currently in version 8.x. As of version 8.0(2), virtualized deployment is

fully supported, when installed on the Cisco UCS architecture.

UC on UCS RequirementsCisco supports virtualizing your Unified Communications solutions on the UCS system, according to these require-

ments/considerations:

1. Cisco UC applications supported in a virtual environment include:

1. Unified Communications Manager 8.0(2)

2. Unified Contact Manager Express 8.0(2)

3. Cisco Unified Presence 8.0(1)

4. Cisco Unity 7.0(2)

5. Cisco Unity Connection 8.0(2)

2. The only hypervisor supported initially is VMware vSphere ESXi version 4.x which includes more of thereal-time enhancements required for UC than ESX. Any other hypervisor versions, products or vendors

are not supported.

3. Bare-mental/physical/non-virtualized installs are not supported.

4. Dedicated CPU/RAM/Storage is required for the VMs, oversubscription is not yet supported.


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5. VMware supported SAN storage is required.

6. 1-4 Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) Virtual Machines per server, dependent on the

model, with MCS 7845 parity per VM (7,500 users).

7. Application co-residency is not yet supported – the ultimate goal is “mix and match.”

8. Only “Basic” features supported (e.g., copy VM, restart VM, HA, SRM), “Advanced” features are deferred

to future versions (e.g., vMotion, snapshots, DRM, templates, DPM, etc.) .9. The hardware BIOS, firmware, and drivers are managed by UCS and VMware, not by CUCM.

10. The boot order is controlled by the VMware virtual machine’s BIOS instead of by the CUCM

Application.

So What’s the Big deal?So, now that we’ve discussed who the major players are, let’s take a closer look at why it’s really such a big deal

that we can now deploy our Unified Communications products as part of our virtual infrastructure, using the

Cisco UCS.

1. Virtualization simplifies the way we do business

Once again, datacenters can be very interesting and challenging environments. Due to the drastic decrease in

server prices over the years, we have gone from large monolithic mainframe servers that process many applica-

tions to one that utilizes much cheaper and smaller servers used for individual applications.

This change in datacenter design means that we have drastically increased the number of physical servers from

a few large ones to hundreds and even thousands of very small ones. This created a problem known as “server

sprawl.” The result of this was many, many servers added to our datacenter that each ran a single application.

These servers were extremely underutilized and collectively created excessive amounts of heat. Since this heat

had to be dissipated with appropriate cooling measures, this resulted in equally excessive power and cooling

costs.

In modern datacenters, we are now able to virtualize these many servers onto a relatively few physical servers.

Although it depends on the type and utilization of a particular application, a normal rule of thumb has shown

that we can effectively virtualize 10-15 servers per physical host. This represents a significant reduction in a data-

center’s footprint and heat generation. For our Unified Communications servers, we are currently able to virtual-

ize up to four servers per physical host. However, this capability will certainly increase with each new version.

2. Lower CAPEX and OPEX

Given that datacenters are incredibly expensive to run (they require expensive real estate, use incredibly large

amounts of electrical power, and have high operational costs), virtualization of our datacenters represent areduction in a company’s Capital Expenditures (CAPEX), but more significantly, their Operational Expenditures

(OPEX).


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One of the highest operational costs within a datacenter is the servers themselves. Modern single-purpose servers

have been shown to only have 5-10% utilization, on average. Conversely, if your servers are using a large per-

centage of your datacenter’s power, like 75%, then we have a very inefficient scenario. By virtualizing these serv-

ers, we can now combine many servers (10-15) onto a single physical server, which raises the overall utilization

significantly and, therefore, lowers the power requirements, relative to running 10 to 15 separate servers. This

alone represents a savings of millions of dollars in a year’s time, according to feedback from many companies.

Additional benefits can be seen beyond the reduced power requirements. In a traditional datacenter, many

smaller servers generate a LOT of heat, which must be dissipated via cooling efforts. The yearly cooling costs

are extremely expensive; but just as bad, strict formulas dictate that we can place only so many servers within so

many of square feet in the datacenter. Through virtualization, we are able to place a greater number of serv-

ers per square foot of the datacenter with reduced cooling requirements. This equates in a much more efficient

datacenter that is more productive and profitable.

Likewise with these other operational costs, cabling represents a HUGE investment in a typical datacenter. For

every server that is virtualized, we are able to reduce the physical cabling required to connect that server. Ad-

ditionally, when implemented within the Cisco UCS, we are able to take advantage of Unified Fabric and furtherreduce cabling requirements, since we can send both LAN and Storage signaling over the same cables.

3. Improved Availability

In a traditional datacenter, if one of your Unified Communications servers crashes, you normally must restart that

device manually. This represents a potentially significant outage for that UC device.

When we virtualize our UC servers, we can take advantage of VMware’s great tools like High Availability (HA)

and Site Recovery Manager (SRM).

• With HA, the failed virtual server will be automatically restarted, which saves a significant amount of

downtime, resulting in greater productivity and profits from that server.• With SRM, we can provide Disaster Recovery by quickly failing over a virtual machine from a main pro-

duction site to a secondary site while ensuring the VM remains active.

4. Licensing

One of the great benefits that we’ll see when virtualizing our UC servers on the Cisco UCS platform is that we can

achieve actual platform mobility. On traditional Cisco Media Convergence Servers (MCS), the UC license is tied to

the physical server’s MAC address of the primary network interface card (NIC). This means that the instance of

the UC application is always tied to that physical device. But what if that server hardware fails? This means that

we are forced to endure some amount of outage until we can build a new server.

With the Cisco UCS, we are able to create Service Profiles that represent the identity of the actual server. We can

then “associate” this service profile with any of the blade servers within the UCS 5108 chassis. By doing this, we

can simply associate our UC server with a new blade server, if needed.


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Of course, you may ask how this is possible when the UC license is tied to the physical NIC of the server. Within

Cisco UCS, we are able to build what’s called a “MAC license,” which is based on several configuration compo-

nents of the UC server:

1. Time zone

2. NTP server

3. NIC speed4. Hostname

5. IP Address

6. IP Mask

7. Gateway Address

8. Primary DNS

9. SMTP server

10. Certificate Information (Organization, Unit, Location, State, Country)

Once the MAC license has been configured, it can simply be associated with the Service Profile and applied towhichever physical blade server is needed.

5. Ease of installation in UCS using OVF templates

One of the barriers to entry, when it comes to UC servers, is the general complexity required to build and config-

ure these applications properly. There is a considerable learning curve required, which requires the presence or

availability of administrators or engineers with these specific skillsets.

With Cisco UCS, configuration templates are available that allow administrators to build and configure complex

UC servers, often with little to no knowledge of datacenter requirements to install UC applications. To make

things even easier, these templates are freely downloadable from Cisco.

The templates conform to an industry-recognized virtualization format called the OVF, or Open Virtualization For-

mat. The OVF is an open standard for describing a virtual machine template. These templates will actually come

with an .ova extension. The Open Virtualization Archive (OVA) is an open standard to package and distribute

these templates. For most supported UC applications, a preconfigured OVA file is provided by Cisco and must be

used. Otherwise the customer must manually build OVA files that meet the indicated requirements.

SummaryIn this white paper, we have seen the incredible benefits of not only optimizing our datacenters with the revolu-

tionary new Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), but further optimizing our Unified Communications infra-structure onto the UCS for even greater efficiency, performance, and savings.

With the advent of integrated solutions like the Cisco UCS, the datacenter has undergone a major paradigm

shift in our methodology of both design and operational management. Furthermore, with the greatly increased


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knowledge we have of the consequences of our designs to not only our bottom line, but to the environment

as well, we now know how important it is to make our datacenters as efficient as possible while still increasing

performance and profitability.

References1. “Unified Communications on Cisco UCS: The final vDC frontier”, By The Bell website, http://www.bythe-

bell.com/2010/04/unified-communications-on-cisco-ucs-the-final-vdc-frontier.html

2. “Cisco Unified Communications on the Cisco Unified Computing System”, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/

netsol/ns1067/index.html

3. “Cisco DocWiki – Unified Communications Virtualization”, http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Com-

munications_Virtualization

4. “Unified Communications Goes Global”, Cisco TechWise TV, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns914/

networking_solutions_program_home.html#archives-a-1

Learn MoreLearn more about how you can improve productivity, enhance efficiency, and sharpen your competitive edge.

Check out the following Global Knowledge course(s):

DCUCI – Cisco Data Center Unified Computing Implementation

DCUCD – Cisco Data Center Unified Computing Design

CIPT1v8.0 – Cisco IP Telephony part 1

CIPT2v8.0 – Cisco IP Telephony part 2

CVOICEv8.0 – Implementing Cisco Unified Communications Voice over IP and QoS

CAPPSv8.0 – Integrating Cisco Unified Communications Applications

VMware vSphere: Fast Track [V4.1]

VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V4.1]

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About the Author Jeffrey Hall is an Independent Consultant and Instructor. Jeffrey has more than 15 years of experience designing

and administering Security, Unified Communications, Datacenter, and Virtualization solutions for such organiza-

tions as the U.S. Army, SBC, AT&T, and Genesis Networks.

Additionally, Jeffrey holds the following certifications: VCI, VCP, CCSI, CCNP Security, CCNP Voice, Data Center

Support Specialists, CCIP, CCDP, and CCNP and lives in the Memphis, TN area with his wife, two daughters, and

grandson.

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Virtualización con UCS