Cisco Unity and Exchange 5.5

[intuity]

There have been discussions about relocating the Microsoft Exchange5.5 email serves in our facility in one state to another local state while maintaining the Unity server in the original home state. Does anybody have detailed information which would indicate that this is not a good design? What I will need is is stuff what what is the total number of hops an Unity server can utilize before degrading service. If any one knows of a configuration that states the minimum requiremts for such a design it would be apprecaited. What are the drawbacks to keeping the Unity in one state versus the Exchange in another state? Distance requirements? Wan requirements and that sort of thing would be appreciated. Thanks, Intuity.

 

[AdmanOK]

I believe that the Unity server must be located on the same network as the Exchange server that it is integrated to; however this does not mean that you cannot have a second exchange server at a remote location that is linked to the first one. We run this configuration at our facilities and it works great. We started with Exchange 5.5 and have upgraded through Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003 without any problems with Unity. The Unity server is integrated with the Exchange server in Oklahoma but the mailboxes for Unity subscribers are also located on Exchange servers in Texas and Mexico.

 

[jerake75]

As of Unity 4.0.3, having Unity and a separate Exchange box exist on different subnets isn't officially supported by Cisco (noted this when I did a fresh install of 4.0.3 on our production box a few months ago).

AdmanOK is right, though, you can run Exchange in another location and have it work just fine. We ran Unity and Exchange 2000 in two separate locations for a few years...had a lot of small, glitchy problems that were a combination of buggy software (version 3.1.2) and the fact that they weren't on the same subnet. Once I moved the Exchange box over to the same building, same subnet as Unity (the two boxes sit side by side, in fact), I haven't had a single issue with Unity.

TMH

 

[intuity]

AdmanOK and Jerake75,

Thank you for the quick responses and information. My client still needs hard and fast documented specifics which will say something to the effect that the Unity and exchange servers must not be separated by X amount of hops due to degradation of service. I have read some of Cisco's documentation which says that they should bein the same building etc or else they experience service degradation. But the documentation doesnot provide documented specifics which identify at which hop levels the service begins to detriorate at or at what distances the service becomes impeded. Do you know of any documentation that states real specifics other than they should both be located in the same building and in the same domain? thanks, Intuity

 

[AdmanOK]

I don't think hops really have anything to do with it... your two enemies are going to be ping response times and bandwidth between the Unity Server and it's integration partner.