BCM 3.6 pro call center auto logs out all agents at once

[aragon]

BCM 3.6 pro call center auto logs out all agents at once.
Anybody ever seen this one?
Nortel no longer posts individual patches only cumulative patches or upgrade to 3.7.
I heard BCM 3.6 to 3.7 upgrade is VERY UGLY.
Upgrade will fail when trying to perform MSC Core upload.

 

[aragon]

Nevermind

 

[BCMprogrammer]

Did you get this fixed? I'm curious about the details. Thanks.

 

[biv343]

Individual patches are still available for download, at least as of this morning.

Upgrade from 3.6 to 3.7 is not very ugly - it works just like every other upgrade since release 2.5 came out.

 

[aragon]

Not ugly says you.
BCM upgrades quite often result in a very expensive paperweight with no alternative but to replace hard drive.
Many individual patches are no longer for download including the 3.6 softphone update and individual MSC core loads.

 

[biv343]

I will agree to disagree then.

Core 6.15 for 3.6 is available for download on Nortel's site. It is not uncommon for them to pull old cores off the site when a new load supercedes the previous ones.

I haven't had an issue with a BCM upgrade since I began copying the upgrade CD's to my laptop. The one time I did have an issue with the upgrade it ended up being a bad CD that gave me a read error halfway through disk 2.

But, we're all entitled to our own opinions of what is upgly and what is not.

 

[aragon]

MSC core 6.15 is one of those patches that often fails.
If it fails during 3.7 upgrade then the upgrade will not complete. Therefore requiring new 3.7 hard drive be installed. Please don't tell me to backup and restore from 3.6 to 3.7 since this is not supported.
6.15 core load may result in undetected MSC card type and upgrade failure. At least one can upgrade to core load 6.12 if you need to upgrade factory MSC core load due to PRI issues.
BTW upgrading to 6.12 and then attempting 6.15 separately may introduce same upgrade failure.
It is not an opinion I merely state the facts.
If anyone else has seen this error then feel free to post on this thread.

 

[biv343]

We're all entitled to think what we want. I haven't had any of the issues you're describing.

I have never had a core patch fail since release 2.5 went GA. I've been working on these systems since Enterprise Edge 1.01 - anyone who worked on the systems pre 2.5 will tell you flat out that there were problems with the upgrade and patch processes in those versions. Even Nortel will fess up to that one.

Why would anyone tell you to restore from a previous version? I never saw a hint of that mentioned here. It is expressly stated in the NTP's that your system may "be in an unusable state" if you were to attempt to do so. That's why the BRU utility will make you click OK at least twice if you attempt to do so. Anyone who would give you that advice has no business working on your communications infrastructure, or is at the very least incapable of reading and interpreting documentation.

I would say that this is definitely your opinion, and not facts. Just like my statement regarding patches and upgrades being a straightforward procedure is my opinion, after having worked on these systems since early 2000.

 

[aragon]

Right BCM is perfect the documentation is perfect, upgrades are flawless, BRU has always been fully functional, and no product bulletins, patches, or stop ship notices have been issued since BCM 2.5.
And the world is flat.
You are being too argumentative.
Obviously you have had your own issues during upgrades as you have had to copy the upgrade CD's to your hard drive prior to upgrade.
I am fully certified on the BCM and have also been working on the product since it's introduction. Your tone is holier than thou. Many on this forum are very experienced and you should not make any assumptions regarding there experience or competence.
If the BCM was perfect there would be no need for this forum. Search this forum and you will see many posts regarding failed upgrade attempts. These failures are always catostrophic. I will not attempt an upgrade personally without first ghosting the original drive.
My issue with the BRU process in general is that there is no way to gracefully recover from a failed upgrade attempt.
Even if the upgrade fails and the drive is replaced with a 3.7 drive there is no way to restore the 3.6 database since BRU is not supported between versions.
In fact in early versions of BCM the BRU process did not work at all!
I will not comment further so if you wish to add a further post in this thread I will not entertain you with another reply.
Also your original reply had nothing to do with my request for assistance with Call Center agents.

 

[BCMprogrammer]

aragon,

Your first post confused me a bit when you wrote:

"Nortel no longer posts individual patches only cumulative patches or upgrade to 3.7."

I interpret that as being that all I will find on the Nortel site is either a big cumulative patch OR an upgrade patch. However, I see several individual patches on there regarding various issues, like Voice Mail, RCC, CC, etc.

Oh, and just wondering if what you found with the original problem since I'm always interested in bugs discovered with CC/RCC applications. Those usually extend my installations an extra day or more, when problems crop up.

 

[biv343]

I apologize for sounding argumentative. That is not my intent. I have never said that the BCM is a perfect product or totally free from flaws. Find me a product that is, and I'll start promoting it tomorrow.

My tone is not meant to sound "holier than thou". As you mentioned, there are many people on this forum who are experienced, as well as some that are not. I simply wanted to debate your claims that upgrades and patches fail. Undoubtedly, sometimes they will. Sometimes you will have issues with the process. I have had issues in the past as well, which is why I now copy the CD's to my hard drive before, which is my preventative . You ghost the hard drive before the upgrade, that is your preventative measure, which is fine.

You are correct that the BRU is flawed in that you cannot restore from a previous version. That is definitely something that Nortel needs to work on.

Apologies to all that I may have offended. Remember that this is a public forum, and that I do not know any of you or your knowledge levels, same as you do not know anything about me.

My original reply didn't mention anything about your request for assistance with Call Center agents as you said "nevermind". Otherwise I would have given you some hints, as I've seen that problem before.

Have a good day.

 

[3Sixty]

I would agree with Biv343 regarding upgrades and patches. I have had very few go wrong and to some respect the ones that have went wrong I feel have not been the coding or the patch but the condition of the OS before the patch or upgrade has been applied.The biggest problem I have came accross with patches is inexperience of the individuals who have been upgrading the systems. This has then created a whole new problem in most cases leading to a new hard drive or reload.

Marshall

http://www.marshallshouse.co.uk

 

[aragon]

I just installed a brand new 3.6 BCM400 could not apply MSC core load 6.15 failed due to upgrade not being able to identify MSC core variant.
6.12 core load installed fine.
Attempted 6.15 after 6.12 to see if upgrading incrementally would help. Same error.
Spoke to another authorized vendor who was with me while I was patching the BCM.
He had the same error message when upgrading 3.6 to 3.7.
However this caused his upgrade to fail.
He opened a ticket with Nortel, Nortel could not help.
They sent him a new 3.7 drive.
BCM had to be re-programmed from scratch.
Failure occurs during MSC upgrade.
This is not an opinion.
This happened at two unrelated sites using software downloaded from Nortel website in my case and in the case of the other vendor he used the 3.7 upgrade kit.
There is no graceful recovery option.
Customer remains out of service.
Hopefully some of these issues will go away when BCM 4.0 is released. This however is an optimistic opinion.
Patches are far too time consuming in BCM and far too frequently required. This is a phone system.
Availability should be 99.999 this translates into less than 5 minutes downtime per year. The average patch takes about 20 minutes while the BCM reboots. This is not acceptable as per industry standards.

 

[3Sixty]

what Lan port did you upgrade on?

Marshall

http://www.marshallshouse.co.uk

 

[aragon]

Guys,

Please don't take my comments personally.
In fact I am a professional and do not wish to sound like a jerk.
I do not wish to enter a debate although it appears I have already done so.
My issues with BCM are with the product itself.
I also have issues with Nortel tech support or lack thereof. Nortel often touts their product as the most reliable etc... If they wish to do this they should deliver. I will wait and see what happens with 4.0 since it is not NT based I'm sure it will be more reliable and available.

 

[MagnaRGP]

Just wanted to drop in my CAD$0.02 about the tech support:

Many of you rant about the lack of tech support at Nortel, but my experience in the past year has led me to several conclusions about how to obtain GOOD tech support almost every time.

Rule 1: Level 1 support is (more often than not) crap if you are experienced with the product.
Rule 2: Level 2 support is usually very good to excellent.

Skip the preliminaries by taking a few minutes to cover your bases right off the bat:

OPEN YOUR CASE WITH THE WEB TOOL!!!

Include screen shots of settings that will be checked by L1 including alarm banners, PRI configuration, module configuration.
Include a system inventory.
Provide Chassis type, Version, patch level (core load etc), Part#, Ser# and Date of Manufacture (eliminates or identifies BFT issue right away).
If you can, get the arch logs running and indicate that you will upload them to the case holder when they are ready.

Provide remote access info if available and/or PAY ATTENTION during a webex session.

If doing a patch session or upgrade, go into a command line and run chkdsk /f on C:, D:, E: and reboot BEFORE you start. This eliminates a LOT of OS issues right away.

Finally, if this is more than a service affecting issue, REQUEST ESCALATION due to customer service issues (revenue call centre is down etc.) Nortel will escalate on request for such reasons.

Be PROactive when providing information (include what you have tried). This removes about 99% of the "shotgun" attempts at resolution that L1 often tries.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

Kthxbye!