Avaya Equinox: Basic Infrastructure Design

[Boulevard999]

Hello All,

I have a question on the Equinox platform with regards to just service impact and redundancy. (Buckle in..)

So, I have a small remote site that is targeted to be migrated to our core CM, away from a smaller legacy stand-alone PBX.

The remote location has a G430, and supports approx 12 users. They also have IP Phones. But, they are only using 6 POTS lines for Inbd/Outbd voice traffic.

The site is due for a SW upgrade, and possibly updated trunking. We are looking to employ Equinox as an alternative voice option to about half the staff.

My question is:
When we update/migrate this G430 from the old PBX over to the new core CM, and IF we provide Equinox to some of the staff (Taking away their desk phones)

How will their LSP fail over respond 'if' there's a loss of network connection from the MGW to the Core for the Equinox Users?

Mind you: The ASM/ASMgr, SBC, AD, and Main CM are all together at the core Data Center. The only Avaya HW that will be at the remote site is the MGW with it's LSP, E1/T1 card, and the phones.

I would like to think I already know the answer just based on the factors, but I've asked around to a few circles, and all answers that came back were 'theoretical' in tone.
No one's come back and said: "Yes, this is EXACTLY how it would happen..."

I am thinking that if the WAN connection between the G430 and the core CM is dropped, the remote LSP kicks in and the IP Phones are still good until the issue is resovled. But, if that same WAN connection impacts the Laptops(Onsite), then Equinox will also go down without impacting the IP Phones because they're not supported by the LSP.

The only way for Equinox users to maintain service is to have an alternate network path to the Core environment like Wifi or the Cellular licensing on their mobile device app.
As long as they have an alternate network path to the SM,SBC,AD, etc.. they're still ok, regardless of MGW status? Meaning, the MGW Could be unplugged, and the Equinox users will still be up?
And this is just for basic voice service. We're not talking any of the other bells or whistles..

Do I have that right? It all sounds ok, but I just want to get an informed confirmation. (For my own sanity)

Thanks!!

 

[kyle555]

LSP can have a Branch Session Manager on it too.

Same way a LSP wakes up from a gateway registering to it, a BSM wakes up because the LSP, once it has a gateway for DSP can bring it`s SIP trunk up.

So, in your SM profile you'd have a primary SM, secondary SM, and survivable server (which cannot be a core SM but can be a BSM or even a IPO or Audiocodes gateway).

SIP phones, when the register, get PPM from Session Manager that includes stuff like key programming and which servers to use. In fact, if you have a BSM site with SIP phones, you'd most likely see the phone simultaneously registered to all 3 SMs. If the phone can't hit either of the first 2 SMs, it'll try the third BSM and the BSM won't be able to do anything until the LSP flips live.

One-X I found generally to follow the servers defined in the app. I believe, but haven't tested for myself, that Equinox should behave like real phones - like how h323 phones that register to CM in 'network region 2' happen to get pushed an alternate gatekeeper list for LSPs supporting region 2 - or how like SIP phones can be provisioned with 1 IP for a SIP server and learn about the multiple servers available in PPM and simultaneously register to 3 of them.

So, the short version is that with a BSM, and a G430 and some trunks that yes, you can have Equinox soft clients fail over to that. Now, that's not to say survivability is a simple matter and the cynic in me wants to say I've probably seen all types of failover cause more problems being done wrong than solve problems for the failures it was designed to address! Layering the SIP failover/failback atop LSP concepts and failover/failback for H248 gateways and H323 phones is just incrementally more complex.

You happened to mention AD in there, and a point of curiosity for me to test out is to see how BSM failover works when losing the central LDAP. Equinox can be configured 101 ways - some where everything is canned, all the config options are greyed out, your profile is already defined, and you pop in your email address and with integrated windows authentication and magic and stardust, it just works. You could have a simpler config where you install the app, go 'configure' and add a sip server and go from there where you'd login with your extension and password. I'd be curious if it could failover and recover back from a fully featured core with LDAP authentication and down to normal BSM/LSP stuff with no other LDAP at the branch.

This LSP stuff is old school and rock solid and there were documents about getting those timers down to the second to explain precisely how a network will behave. There is no such doc for SIP UC for your softclient failing over and back from a more featured core to a basic BSM/LSP branch. I'd want the whole thing tested out to make sure those softphones failover right, but I can be a stickler

 

[Boulevard999]

Mother of God Kyle,

You are a priceless treasure on this site!! Thank you VERY Much for shedding some much needed light on this for me!

This info will definitely help us (me) better understand what we're looking at and make a better informed decision.

Thank you again!!!

 

[kyle555]

Happy to help Got starting learning everything I know reading everything Mr AvayaTier3 said here for the last decade. And then reading it again. And then reading the docs. It's nice to be able to toss something in your google machine and find an answer in plain english every once in a while!