BCM 450 crash kit

[ljclives]

I have a couple BCM 450's still in service. I'm trying to put together a crash kit of sorts. If a hard drive fails can you give me the specs of the drive to put in?
I would assume just restoring a backup to that drive will not necessarily be 100% In other words what about keycodes? One of the end users has a PRI and 80 mailboxes. I do not know the keycodes how do I find out?

 

[bcmfiftyfan]

Vendors with access to the Avaya keycode retrieval system can get the keycodes for you. You'll need to provide them with the BCM system ID.

Keycodes remain intact in BCM release 6 when a hard drive fails.

Multi-image hard drives are available that allow you to select the desired BCM software release. Use putty to connect.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

You might want to keep a multi image disk and will work on all BCM 50 and 450 versions.

I personally have that image and the original Nortel/ Avaya Acronis *.tib ones that I have used to rebuild systems.

As mentioned above, the Keycode function from release 5.0 onwards was changed in that there were two locations that stored the keycode file. Ones was on the hard disk and a new location was left in a folder on the Motherboard, which is referred to when the BCM boots up.

A number of us have ways to get round some of the problems with recovering / changing keycodes, but it is always worthwhile keeping a copy of them. Any backups you have will contain the keycode file.

My advice is to clone a copy of your existing BCM. It will mean powering it down to make a copy.

As your BCM's are both 450 systems, then an even better idea is to get keycode 241 enabled on your systems to allow raid to work. All you need to do is to get a couple of hard disks such as the Seagate 80 gig ones and have two mirrored hard disks in use.

I have attached a guide on this simple process and feel free to contact me if you need any more advice.



Firebird Scrambler
Nortel and Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer

Very advance high level knowledge on the Linux BCM phone system.

Website

http://somertel.myfreesites.net

 

[bcmfiftyfan]

Also make sure you have a BCM450 power supply in your crash kit. It's the most likely component to fail.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

I agree with BCMFiftyFan as all the hardware faults I've had were all Power Units. The BCM 400 uses the same power unit.

I had a customer who replaced their BCM 400 and had it propping up a door as they were told the BCM wasn't supported, but had to upgrade to a more up to date BCM 450 system.

The engineer who came out couldn't even get a replacement BCM 450, let alone a power unit and by chance, the customer hadn't chucked out the 400 system.

It just goes to say, never get rid of a system if it still works!.

Firebird Scrambler
Nortel and Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer

Very advance high level knowledge on the Linux BCM phone system.

Website

http://somertel.myfreesites.net

 

[ljclives]

Awesome advice let me digest it and get back to you. I may be contacting you firebird you offer remote tech support? For a fee of course Im fairly knowledgeable on the Nortel MICS/CICS weaker on BCM's. Regarding power supplies yes I have seen it firsthand. System installed in 2010; replaced power supply on main cabinet 2012 and expansion cabinet last month.

I will do a backup of the two systems out there where exactly will I find keycode file? Can I get into element manager and see?

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

From inside Element Manager, go to one of the top level areas "System" I think and there is a sub system called Keycodes. The site ID is listed there.

Also any backups you do will also contain the proper keycode and use something like WinRAR etc to open it up and look for a file called licensefile.txt.

Firebird Scrambler
Nortel and Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer

Very advance high level knowledge on the Linux BCM phone system.

Website

http://somertel.myfreesites.net

 

[ljclives]

Thank you. Yes I see system ID but is there a way to see the actual keycode string for the feature? How about MICS PRI's what is the procedure there?

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

The BCM 450 range was run using Linux and the keycode structure was different to the older versions in that you only had one keycode generated at a time for the whole site ID and it's features.

If you look at the licensefile.txt file found in the backup file, then you will see what I'm referring about.

Firebird Scrambler
Nortel and Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer

Very advance high level knowledge on the Linux BCM phone system.

Website

http://somertel.myfreesites.net

 

[curlycord]

You cannot view key codes on a MICS but some of use can generate codes (for both).

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