Avaya Integrated Management Suite 1

[phonegoober]

we are installing the integrated management suite-advanced coverged.

Had not had much help from avaya as we chose note to spend the 10K for installation.

Question is:
Do we need to configure anything in the PBX with the server IP addresses? We have the Linux Sever and Windows 2003 server built.

anything else?

thx

 

[Chanice]

Yes on the Definity Ch sys ip you need to put the monitoring server's IP address. Be warned if you are running com manager 2.1 or later the IP hard phone will reboot by them self. or it will adjust your spanning tree if running. best to it out of hours.

 

[phonegoober]

Thanks.. So. you are saying that whenever we input the ip address, our ip hardphones will go down. we have 4 or 5 different network regions with various ip hardphones and they will be impacted as well? we have spanning-tree bpdufilter enabled as well.

also, the ip address on the "ch sys ip" screen. is that the windows 2003 server or the Linux server for integrated managment?

thanks agin

 

[Dunstan]

Linux server.


I just finished building this for my enterprise. If you do not use Avaya (I did not) then it is cumbersome at best to get everything working. That said it is by far the best enterprise Definity tools package I have seen in over 15 years of doing this.

Very difficult to get it 100% functional. However it is worth the work.

 

[phonegoober]

Dunstan,

We got it up and running well on our own. yes, we did have our bumps in the road and avaya did not help at all since we decided to do it on our own. 3.0 intgerated managment suite is out, have you migrated to that yet?

 

[Dunstan]

No...I have not. I only have one site currently running 3.0 and could not cost justify the upgrade at the time. I plan to do that when I implement an enterprise ESS cluster which is just in the beginning phases now. Do you run 3.0?

 

[phonegoober]

we are currently 2.1. we are upgrading to 3.0 soon.
Wanted to know what the true value of 3.0 Integrated managment is. I know what he values of comm mgr 3.0 is an ESS is something we are looking at as well.

there's so much to integrated management. We have not used multi-site admin yet, but plan on doing so. We pretty much have been using fault and perf mgr.

 

[Dunstan]

We use MSA and FPM the most. It makes a great single source VPN point for on call/after hours administration.

If you upgrade to 3.0 CM they will force you to upgrade the AIM suite as well. I chose not to because only 1 of my 40 or so sites is 3.0 and wasn't ready to pay the upgrade costs until I convert others.

The value of 3.0 for us was all about license pooling (Enterprise) and ESS. The ability to add multiple layers of redundancy without some klugie work around was the motivator. Centralized licensing was the next best aspect.

It seems the only functionality I lost by not upgrading my AIM suite to 3.0 is the ability to use MSA on my one 3.0 site. So if you are not using MSA it would really be added cost....

By the way you should be pretty damn proud of yourselves for getting this application up and running without Avaya. Very few organizations have the kind of expertise in house to do it well. I laughed when our BP saw it working for the first time at a client site (ours), because even though they have sold it thousands of times only those who paid Avaya to get it running actually did.

 

[twix79]

We've got AIM 3.0 up and running, mostly. We also chose to go it on our own, and has proved to be frustrating. I'm still trying to determine how to best utilize many of the packages.

I have about 70 locations added in to MSA and FPM. Our centralized technicians have not taken to MSA yet, still prefer ProComm to access each of these sites. Is there anything in particular that would be enticing for them to make the switch? As far as FPM, do you have it running in a NOC, or do you rely on it to send out notification if needed?

If you use VMM, do you use it proactively, or reactively? From what I can tell, its probably best used to troubleshoot calls when a problem is reported, but I think it would be nice to identify those problems before they are reported.

We haven't used the Software Update manager much at all. Looking forward to using it for updating TN boards. AIM 3.1 as I understand.

I also haven't done too much with the Network Management tool. I would like to find a way to use one or a combination of these tools to identify if a C-Lan or MedPro board is not responding on the network. If anyone is doing something like this, please let me know.

 

[Dunstan]

You realize that MSA has terminal emulation and "cut through" programming available for those who prefer the "procomm" feel?

In other words if you/they are stuck and uncomfortable making a transition perhaps you can focus on it's ability to do emulation as well as having many nifty tools for things like global changes, scheduled changes, templates etc. You get the best of both worlds as opposed to only one.

How quickly can they switch between locations to make a comparison between two configs in procomm? In MSA it is almost instantaneous. I can probably list 100 reasons why it is better. The first place I would start is that you can do what you do in procomm without giving up a terminal type interface...plus more. Things like pre-designed templates that creat VM boxes for subscribers without having to log into the VM system as well as the pbx, or "global changes" which allow you to change a setting in all of your locations without having to re-type or log into each. This is just a couple of the many scenarios

As to other aspects of your question we use FPM as a NOC tool (they used to only have up/down information now they get alarms...hell almost real time alarms as it pertains to Sxxxx type servers. Also the suite in general allows you to make a single point VPN location (via your intranet) to open and observe all your sites at once...That is it's main use in our enterprise. I don't have to use multiple places (shared folders, ASA configs) etc etc to deliver a single point of access for our on call tech. That in and of itself is invalable to our ops team.


The network management console is totally appropriate for the last question you spoke to. It will in fact allow you to add each individual node (clan, medpros, Val boards, IP set etc) to a single location for visability purposes which will in fact tell you if it is responding, etc.

If you do this installation yourself as you have stated was done it is important to understand how it works and what it is capable of doing. IMO it gives the type of visability data end points have enjoyed via HP openview yet it is designed to also allow you to control what you see.

 

[twix79]

Thanks for the tips Dunstan.