Cisco

Call Manager Upgrade

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Finally after 4 attempts (or at least I counted 4) we have upgraded our VOIP PBX to the latest version of Cisco Call Manager. Now we are happily (for now) running on version 4.1.3 release 2. This is a vast improvement over our previous version 3.3.3. Looking at version numbers doesn’t explain why, but trust me it was a needed upgrade.

We had so many false starts with this thing that I am happy that it is finally over. The problem is that the upgrade is over, but the upgrade was the first part of other enhancements we need to make. Everything else was held up by the upgrade. Hopefully Kai will pull it together and complete the other dependent tasks related to this upgrade now that we are on CCM 4.

I also hope this is the last time we have to use our current integrators. This upgrade was part of the original deal to install our IPCC system. Now that it is done I am going to shop around and try to find a new Cisco partner. I am going to lunch with our Cisco rep this week to discuss things. I am also going to lunch with another Cisco partner that our telecom rep knows. They are supposed to be a Cisco gold partner. I am keeping my options open for now. Soon I will need to pick someone to do our phone system in our office if we move to a new location.

ESX Server?

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I have praised VMWare’s products for some time on this blog. As things look now, I will continue to do so. I have used their workstation product for almost 2 years. I have used GSX server for about a year. Now comes ESX server. It looks awesome. I have a project that requires allot of new hardware to be built. ESX server looks like an good alternative to server sprawl. Instead of building dozens of servers, the same solution done virtually can be done with a few (not many) ESX servers. The cost benefit is real. I ran some figures over the weekend and it can save us a nice amount of money by going virtual. Then there are the saving space, and energy issues. And the flexibility we get by having a virtual setup. I am really excited about what we can do.

I have been trying out ESX on a test box we setup (reminds me I have a VM building right now that probably needs some click next help). The install was quick. I now have to read the dozen or so white papers spread across my desk (my computer desktop and physical desk). This software solves problems I didn’t even think about until I got to reading about the solutions. Multi vlan support is nice, as well as NIC teaming. I have allot of reading and testing to do in the short amount of time I have until we have to deploy the solution. I don’t think have been this excited about a technology since Call Manager. More info as I play (i mean test).

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Pre-Opening Day

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Today I “won” the chance to goto a pre-grand opening of the new Best Buy in NYC. Someone at work couldn’t be there, so I guess they knew the store manager and he gave her a ticket for someone else to go in her place. She gave it away to the 3rd email respondent! I was it. It was cool. There was food, and you got to check out the store before it opened to the public. I felt all special getting in by invitation only! The best part of course was the discount. They had a one day deal that anything you bought that night was at the employee discount price. On some items that was a nice deal. I have wanted to get a LCD TV or Plasma for almost 2 years now. Every time I look at price they are way too expensive for what I want. Then to settle was not worth the money.

I wanted to get a 42″ HDTV plasma. They are way to expensive. I didn’t want to get an EDTV plasma at the same price. it just wasn’t worth it. So I decided to go with a 32″ LCD TV. I saw the price online and said with a nice discount I would be willing to buy it. I went to the store, found the TV I wanted and checked on the discount. I was blown away by the deal. I was all ready to buy it. Then a bad thing happened. I looked at the bigger TV next to it. It was a 40″ LCD HDTV. Beautiful, crystal clear, and WAY out of my budget. Then someone else asked the price of it after the deal. I was shocked at how good a deal it actually was. It was still expensive, but within my budget (barely) and a deal that I would never see again. I called my dad, since he wanted a TV also. We were going to go shopping in a few weeks anyway for one. I told him the situation and the price. I also warned him that the price was only part of it. He needed to get the extended warrantee since this thing was big and pricey. You don’t want to take a chance with it breaking. Then I told him he needed to have it professionally wall mounted. He said get it. Not wanting to abuse a special deal I said only if I can get more than 1. I asked and the staff was very cool. They were like yeah you can get 2. As I was standing there waiting to place my order there where several other people doing the same thing I was (buying 2).

I got my order in, and went upstairs to pay for it. It was allot of money for a spur of the moment item, but I have wanted one for so long, and the deal was not every going to be better, no matter what I kept telling myself. Now I can’t wait for it to arrive. They had to ship it to me. Something about not selling anything at the store since they wanted stock for the real opening later this week. I didn’t care, I wasn’t going to carry 2 TV’s home anyway.

I figured if I could get a nice

Roller Coaster Day

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When I didn’t think the day could get any crazier it did. I was very busy all day putting out fires at work (figuratively not really). Just as I recovered from a week delay on our AD project, I get major complications from our IPCC deployment. Dan and I had a opinionated discussion with our integrators. We also are very close to purchasing our first SAN. We are pretty sure we got the price to a number we are happy with.

Finalized plans to make changes to our voice circuits to allow for more resiliency if we have a failure. Stupid issues arose regarding mislabeling of circuits. The little details that we are not following up on are killing me, but when asked to get tons done in a certain amount of time, you have to give somewhere. I just don’t like doing it.

I have other issues going on with VPN tunnels to partners of ours. It has been very stressful. I thrive on stress, but sometimes it is allot. Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer.

A Good Day

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it was busy today, but I got allot done. I got final approval for the active directory design I wanted.

The initial AD servers are built. Or I should say the OS is built. They goto the data center tomorrow. Then they get mounted and built. Once done the real work begins.

On another project I am having danny work on some VPN setup issues. I wanted to deal with it, but as Glenn said I need to delegate more. And I really do. I am so busy I need to hand off items to others.

IPCC deployment is delayed. This is an internal decision. I never really thought the target date was achievable anyway. These new targets seem more realistic. I would rather the system be correct, than rushed out. More on that as it develops.

A Good Steak

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Wednesday night I went to a meet and greet for Cisco people interested in (or using) IPCC. I met some cool high level tech guys on the team from Cisco, the product manager, etc. I also had some important questions answered for me.

I met up with Pankaj, and we cut out of the meet and greet and hit Morton’s for dinner. I love a good steak. I also love a good steak 2 nights in a row. We had a few drinks waiting for some other people we were meeting up with. It was a good time. I even got to try the Godiva desert I missed the last time I was at Morton’s with Alison. It was fantastic.

I ended up back at the Paris and met up with Joe, Karen and Joe’s folks for drinks at the lounge. I didn’t drink more (i was pretty well off from the Morton’s alcohol) but I hung out with them for a while.

Cisco Networkers 2005

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Today was the first full day of Cisco Networkers. Allot of cool stuff going on. Way too much for me to go into too much detail. In a recap yesterday I learned what will be happening in the new version of IPCC. Some cool stuff there. I ate not enough food at the expo Cisco threw. I wasn’t hungry for that kind of fare, but it was awesome stuff. I got some information on some products I was interested in. I got some follow up reading to do. Then I got some answers from some engineers at Cisco about some products. I also got some free software that I need to try out. I could have used it a few weeks ago, but what can you do?

After that I meet up with my friend Joe. he is also out in Vegas for the same conference. We met up with his girlfriend and parents (they all came out to hang while he did his conference thing). They wanted to do the Star Trek Experience in the Hilton, but thankfully we just browsed the gift shop. They ended up eating the buffet at the hilton instead of eating at the Star Trek Theme restaurant. I ended up at a little cafe in the Paris. I am not a Vegas buffet person. I NEVER get my moneys worth at one of those. I don’t eat enough. Money wasn’t the reason I didn’t go though. I just don’t like those things. Even the nicest ones seem skeevy to me. Maybe it is memories of the Circus Circus buffet when I was 14?

Today’s keynote by John Chambers was good. He is a really good speaker. This was the second time I got the opportunity to hear him speak.

The first session I went to was overkill for me. They were talking about really high end network design of Data Centers. Cool to be sure, but I won’t be needing to apply those theories for a while. The next 2 sessions were on IPCC. What you can do with VOIP is amazing. I already drank the cool-ade on that stuff a while ago, but it is truly amazing what you can do with VOIP. Video, Soft-phone, Call Routing, Etc.

Tomorrow hopefully I will learn some other cool network stuff. I get to do a class on SNMP. I use it a bit now, but a better understanding of it would be very helpful.

Clean Up

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I got a bunch of misc. items done today and yesterday in anticipation of my week in Vegas next week. I will be out at the Cisco Networkers conference. Unfortunately they hold it in Las Vegas:) So I will have to suffer.

I sat with Bob yesterday and discussed the project plan for our major new site redesign. It sounds super interesting. It will be just stressful for me and my team. I keep telling myself I will be bored if we were not as busy as we are. It is still hard having a queue of stuff to get to, and some of it won’t get worked on for months.

Kai and I are both out next week. he is on vacation and totally unavailable. I will be reachable, so that is good, but the team will be short handed by 2 next week.

James was off today so I ended up doing some grunt phone configuratin work. That meant besides working on the Definity I had to go under desks doing some wireing. Not fun, but I got everything that needed to be done taken care of. I have to repeat what I have said before, working on the Call Manager is so much easier and straight forward than working on the Avaya Definity or any other Avaya switch I have worked on.

More Softphones That Are Cool!

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I got the chance to play with Cisco’s new IP Communicator software. Well it is not that new anymore, but it was new to me. I had used their older IP Softphone software. This is just a new version of their phone-less phone. IP Communicator lets you use your computer as the telephone. The concept is fantastic, and IP Communicator actually works as advertised.

The software emulates the look of a Cisco 7970 IP Phone. You can do 4 way conference calls (we cannot do that on the 7940’s we have). Answering and placing calls is as easy as having a hard phone. Searching the Corporate directory is faster now that you have a real keyboard to search. The call quality was great.

I need to try the software out from a cable modem this weekend. I have it on my Thinkpad to give it a whirl.

Softphone did allot of what I just discussed, but it was a pain to setup and configure. Communicator was simple to do. The only draw backs will be fixed when we move to CCM 3.3.4 or later. The main issue being extension mobility not working.

Travel Essentials

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As I said the other day, I don’t travel anywhere near as much as I used to. Just because I don’t go out of the office that much doesn’t mean that when I do I want to be any less connected. I did a quick overnight trip Monday-Tuesday. I (bored on the train) now write about what I relied on during the trek.

While in transit nothing says keeping in contact with the world like a Blackberry. When you can’t or don’t want to bring out a laptop it is essential. I hate it for everything else, including the stupid direct connect. I find that if I want to hold a conversation I might as well call the person than have a 20 minute conversation on DC. For email nothing beats the Blackberry, yet.

My powerbook was the laptop of choice this trip. My thinkpad is acting funky, and I don’t want to wipe it since I am getting a new one next week. So the powerbook stepped in and performed flawlessly (so far). I used it to watch some tv shows I recorded last week. Checked mail, did work, blogged, etc. All over Wifi!

Without the iPod I would not be sane. It makes train trips, and quiet hotel rooms that much more tolerable. It also is a great portable hard drive to store said TV shows that I watched on my powerbook. I say YES to plug and play!

My Treo is great (always carry it), but this trip it was used as it normally is. Still great, and a must for travel. What I used instead was Extension Mobility on Cisco Call Manager. It is the ability to log into any CCM phone and your extension moves with you. That coupled with the Cisco WIFI cordless phone make working in a different office just like I was in NYC, even when I was running around between 2 floors.

My new Omega X-33 watch was also a must this trip. I use my watch as an alarm wherever I go. I took my timex (broken band and all) along just in case the Omega didn’t do its job. It worked fine. I almost fell out of bed with the loudness of the alarm this morning. First impressions is this watch and I hopefully will have a long friendship!

Lastly I loved my Broadvoice VOIP phone, & Skype. I didn’t use broadvoice this trip, but I used its voice mail. I got all my VM emailed to me so I stayed in touch with everyone. I would never have checked my NYC VM without it. Skype is great since I can use it on my powerbook with my Sony Ericsson HBH-65 bluetooth headset from anywhere I have an internet connection. For this trip it was free calls from the hotel. I didn’t even need my cell phone for it. If I had broadvoice soft-phone I wouldn’t even need skype.

I have talked (praised) most of these items before, but when you use them all together you have a very smooth travel experience. I will most likely be using most if not all of this gear on my next extended trip. Now if only Amtrak could accommodate a nice ON TIME trip and travel would be painless.

The train is approaching Penn now. About an hour and 15 minutes late. So I will wrap this up so I can put the powerbook away. More mobile reviews when I use the stuff and have time to write about them! This post was written on Tuesday afternoon 5-17-05…

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