Cisco UCS Manager - Stateless computing demo

I have created a video to illustrate several demo scenario on how Cisco UCS achieve stateless computing, target to give you all a brief overview on our UCS manageability and how service profiles help to streamline the daily operations.

The video is voice over with Cantonese, sorry for those non-Cantonese speakers.  Will voice over in English when I have time.


Several configuration example has been touched on including:
- Pool creation (UUID, WWNN, WWPN, MAC)
- vNIC and vHBA template creation
- Service Profile template
- Create service profile from service profile template
- Associate Service Profile template with Server Pool to achieve service profile failover
- Rapid Server provisioning
- Server migration

SIP CME - authentication register

For SIP CME configuration, you will find local phones can register to CME without the need of "authentication register" command.  The CME will authenticates the MAC address compare with the ARP request.

For remote phones that are NOT in the same subnet, SIP digest authentication is required.  You need username and password stored in the phone config file, and compare it against the voice register pool.

Without "authentication register", when you do a "debug ccsip message", you will see 401 Unauthorized for the remote phones.

"authentication register" is a global settings and will affect all phones.

Sample configuration

voice service voip
allow-connections sip to sip
sip
bind control source-interface vlan102
bind media source-interface vlan102
!
voice register global
mode cme
source-address 1.1.1.1 port 5060
max-dn 20
max-pool 20
authenticate register
!
voice register dn  1
number 1001
!
voice register pool  1
id mac 0011.2233.4455
type 3905
number 1 dn 1
dtmf-relay sip-notify
username 1001 password cisco
codec g711ulaw

Create Custom Tab for Jabber for Windows

You can create custom tab for Jabber for Windows to show HTML contents, just like a browser within Jabber for Windows client.  To do so, you can follow the below steps:


1. Access the following directory, assuming you are using a Windows 7 machine
C:\Users\%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\Config

2. Copy the file jabber-config.xml to the same folder and rename it to jabber-config-user.xml
3. Edit the jabber-config-user.xml file, below is an example to access this blog within Jabber for Windows client.

4. Save the file and restart Jabber

Good luck!

Cisco Jabber for Windows with UDS

User Data Interface is the new application interface that allows Cisco Jabber for Windows to search UCM user database and make user contacts available to Jabber for Windows user, you can search and add the contact to Jabber for Windows buddy list.  Not necessary UCM local user, you can synchronize AD users to UCM, then make it available to Jabber via UDS.  This is what I am doing in my lab.

To enable UDS, you need to create a new xml file namely jabber-config.xml.  The following example xml file enables UDS as well as using presence credential for phone services.

Remember to save this file in UTF-8 encoding.  Upload this file to UCM via UCM OS administration, to its root folder.  Then restart TFTP service on UCM and try to login via Jabber for Windows, then you can search and add contacts from UCM user contacts.

My environment:  UCM 8.6.2 + CUP 8.6.2 + Jabber for Windows 9.0.2

Unable to recognize the Camera on 9971 / 9951

In my recent testing I've found that there is an issue in recognizing the camera on 9971 / 9951 when it is powered by PoE, with CDP on the switch DISABLED.  When you "show power inline", without CDP enabled, the power that is drawn is 15.4W and the device type is IEEE PD.  On the phone you will not see the camera under the "Accessories" and no "Self-View" soft keys available on the phone.  "Video capabilities" and "Cisco Camera" have already enabled on UCM admin page under the 9971 device.

Workaround:
In that case you need to enable CDP on the switch, when you "show power inline" you will see the power that drawn is around 12W and the device type is Cisco 9971.  Under "Accessories" in the phone admin settings you will see the camera is recognized, and you can "Self-View" on the phone.

There is no such issue if you are using a power cube or power injector.

Factory reset your Mac Lion

This is something I have just done today.  Reset my Mac to factory default then restore the data from TimeMachine on my NAS.

1. Restart the Mac then press command-R, until you see the Apple logo
2. The Recovery HD will start up, you will see "Mac OS X Utilities"
3. Choose "Disk Utility", the erase your partition with data that you don't want
4. Choose Reinstall Mac OS X Lion, make sure you have either wired or wireless network connected
5. Restore from Mac OS X after Lion is installed, either from the initialization wizard or migration assistant after install

Reset Mac OS X root password

The prerequisite is your current login with admin right.

sudo passwd root

Decrypt Cisco VPN Group Password

As title. to decrypt Cisco VPN Group Password from .pcf file, the profile file of the legacy IPSEC VPN client, this is the tool that I always use and it always work:

http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/bin/cisco-decode/

Force Spotlight Reindex

My spotlight on MBP seems not working well, the following command force the spotlight to reindex:

sudo mdutil -E /

UCS Manager + VM-FEX - Not compatible with VMWare vCenter appliance

Just come across an issue during the VM-FEX proof of concept test with customer, I am using UCSM 2.0 and trying to configure VM-FEX with VMWare ESXi 5.0 and vCenter 5.0.  We are using vCenter appliance 5.0, not installing the vCenter on Windows, for this test.  The result is after the integration, all VM can't be powered up.

After a quick search and found this KB:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2004079

UCS Manager with VM-FEX does not support the vCenter Server Appliance in any available release.


After we build a new vCenter on Windows (not appliance), everything is working fine.  :)