Configuration errors and voicemail down

[ircmaxell]

We're running an IP406 V2 with firmware 4.2.4. It has been running fine for months... (Last config update was over a month ago). All of a sudden, on Monday morning, voicemail (Voicemail Lite) would go down intermittently.

After a few reboots of the IPO, and the virtual machine that Voicemail was running on (XP Pro), the problem was finally traced to the switch. It appeared that the virtual machine was loosing connection to the IPO (wouldn't even respond to pings), but to and from other IP addresses on the network worked fine... So we restarted the switch. Which seemed to solve the random dropping issue.

Now, the IPOffice manager won't let me login (error -2). Voicemail is complaining that "Awaiting load of config, access to voice mail denied". After some searching, this appeared to point to a corrupt config on IPO... So I reloaded the config with a known good one. Then I rebooted. Then I cleared it and reloaded the old config. Then I cleared it, rebooted, reloaded the old config, rebooted again. I even tried a cold reboot. Nothing, always gives the same error message...

The kicker of it, is that, except for voicemail, the system appears to be working fine. The phones all work as expected... The system status program shows everything as normal...


The trace on the voicemail...

09:22:18.006 - BulkInfoRequest 172.25.44.81 2
09:22:18.006 - PBX Requesting ULaw companding
09:22:18.022 - Initialize Sequencer tx_seq=0, rx_seq=7
09:22:18.022 - TFTPLoadFile 172.25.44.81
09:22:18.022 - 0 mailboxes were open (but not active) when flushed
09:22:18.037 - DevIO::StartTask 172.25.44.81
09:22:18.037 - BulkInfoRequest 172.25.44.81 2
09:22:18.053 - PBX Requesting ULaw companding
09:22:18.053 - Initialize Sequencer tx_seq=0, rx_seq=7
09:22:18.053 - TFTPLoadFile 172.25.44.81
09:22:18.053 - DevIO:etach 172.25.44.81
09:22:18.069 - 0 mailboxes were open (but not active) when flushed
09:22:18.084 - DevIO::StartTask 172.25.44.81
09:22:18.084 - DevIO:etach 172.25.44.81
09:22:21.991 - DevIO::RxAbort 172.25.44.81
09:22:21.991 - DevIO:etach 172.25.44.81
09:22:22.006 - DevIO:etach 172.25.44.81
09:22:23.131 - 172.25.44.81 - Awaiting load of config, access to voice mail denied.
09:22:26.725 - 172.25.44.81 - Awaiting load of config, access to voice mail denied.

The last 2 are when I try to access it from my phone.
The bit before it repeats every 30 seconds to 1 minutes...

I'm kinda lost as to how to go forward... Any ideas?

 

[TomMills]

voicemail isnt supported on virtual machines.

"There's a dog in the New Zealand section

 

[jamie77]

Load it onto a standard XP box and see if it works then

Jamie Green

ACA:Implement - IP Office
ACS:Implement - IP Office

Football is not a matter of life and death-It is far more important!!!!

 

[codermonkey]

I very very rarely flame people, however thats gotta be the biggest cop out answer I've seen on this forum.

I've been running VMlite on a Virtual Machine for over two years, no issues!

The IPO has no way of knowing that its inferacting with a VM.

 

[TomMills]

call it what you will. its not supported. if you have it working, good for you.

"There's a dog in the New Zealand section

 

[jamie77]

ditto.

Go ask Avaya for help!!

Jamie Green

ACA:Implement - IP Office
ACS:Implement - IP Office

Football is not a matter of life and death-It is far more important!!!!

 

[tlpeter]

For using vmlite you should get fired
Oke that was a joke
It isn't supported so try using a simple xp box like jamie says
If it works on that then probably there is something wrong on the virtual machine or something related
I know it should work and it is probably only not supported because Avaya did not test it(i understand that !)

ACS - Implement IP Office
ACA - Implement IP Telephony -- ACA - Design IP Telephony
ACA - Voice Services Management
______________
Women and cats can do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea!

 

[kholladay]

While I do agree, to a point, with codermonkey the fact remains that until recently Avaya Product Development didn't even know what virtualization was or how it worked. After much belaboring I was able to find some advocates for testing and supporting virtualiation on IP Office software. The issue wasn't that this was tested but didn't work. The issue was that it was never tested at all and thus anything not tested is not supported.

Virtualization does work. Virtualization will very soon be officially supported on HP servers (perhaps as soon as today if I can get everyone together on the phone) with quad core processors, >4GB of RAM with 32-bit client OS and a 64-bit host OS. Today, however, it is not "supported" and if you try it and it doesn't work you really can't expect people to "support" you.

Do I think it has anything to do with what you are having issues with now? Nope.

Kyle Holladay
ACA-I, ACA Call Center, ACS-I, ACS-M, TIA-CTP, MCP/MCTS Exchange 2007
ACE Implement: IP Office

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it." - Henry Ford

 

[TomMills]

so Kyle, can we expect support anytime soon? i think the main thing people will want is voicemail.

On the topic of supporting things, anyone heard anything about windows 7 or am i getting way ahead of myself?

"There's a dog in the New Zealand section

 

[tlpeter]

Yes you are
Avaya will support a new windows OS after 6 months
At least that is what they try

ACS - Implement IP Office
ACA - Implement IP Telephony -- ACA - Design IP Telephony
ACA - Voice Services Management
______________
Women and cats can do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea!

 

[TomMills]

Vista was way more than 6 months though.

"There's a dog in the New Zealand section

 

[tlpeter]

Was it ?
I don't know, i never had Vista

ACS - Implement IP Office
ACA - Implement IP Telephony -- ACA - Design IP Telephony
ACA - Voice Services Management
______________
Women and cats can do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea!

 

[TomMills]

i had it for about 3 days.....

"There's a dog in the New Zealand section

 

[Westi]

have you tried to find out why it didn't even respond to a ping? Rebooting the switches you said fixed it, just for fun change the ports if they are unmanaged switches or even better get off the switch and plug it straight into the IPO LAN ports. I can only guess that you have no funky Network setup with VLAN's and a lot of stuff in it but maybe you have then let us know how it is setup and we can maybe find something better then "try an XP box" even though that should be easy to do as VM lite is a simple application.

Joe W.

FHandw., ACS

If you can't be good, be good at it!

 

[ircmaxell]

Well, I did a fresh install of the admin suite on a desktop box with XP Pro, and everything appears to be working.

I still don't understand how pushing updates from the VM could cause corrupt configs, but pushing the same config from the desktop isn't... I guess it could be due to corruption in the software...?

Westi -
We've had some issues with ARP table corruption in this particular model of switches (different physical units). It is a managed switch... What happens, is that every so often specific IP's can't contact other specific IP's (it's random to).

It's back up now, so at least we have time to work and debug the problem (if it is the switch, or if there's corruption in the VM, etc)... Thanks for the advice...

 

[amriddle01]

I,ve not had a huge amount of experiance with virtual servers, however I have (when customers sign a waiver) installed VM Pro on a virtual server with no issue. Could a windows update have caused this issue by re-initialisng a firewall or similiar. Is port UDP 50791 in use by anything else?


ACS - IP Office Implement

"I'm just off to Hartlepool to buy some exploding trousers

 

[kholladay]

I've already tested Voicemail Pro, Manager, Phone Manager and all of the web clients (1XP, CCR and ContactStore) on Windows 7 without issue and reported these back to product development for documentation and support. Expect to see that with R6.

Regarding virtualization expect to see the ability to run all application on a single server. The argument is that the IP Office is not sized for a customer base that would expect to need more than a single server to run all applications. The test bed has/had Voicemail Pro, 1XP, ContactStore and CCR all running on a single server with a VM for 1XP and CCR and the others running on the host OS as they support a 64-bit platform. The major issue in the past, and well currently to be honest, is that 1XP and CCR both want 2GB of RAM and a dual core processor. To run those together along with the host OS would require more than 4GB of RAM which pushes you into a 64-bit OS that isn't currently supported. To run a single quad core server with say 8GB of RAM on the host would allow you to easily create 2 virtual machines each with 2GB of RAM on a 32-bit guest OS.

I have tested all of this already and it has been validated by Avaya so we are simply waiting on documentation and approval by Tier 3 for support.

Kyle Holladay
ACA-I, ACA Call Center, ACS-I, ACS-M, TIA-CTP, MCP/MCTS Exchange 2007
ACE Implement: IP Office

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it." - Henry Ford

 

[amriddle01]

That would be nice, but again coming back to the real world very few (at least for us) customers would buy that kind of hardware apart from price, but also as the majority are changing out old systems and have all servers already in place and expect the applications that come with the new system to work on kit that is under 3 years old but not the latest and greatest

ACS - IP Office Implement

"I'm just off to Hartlepool to buy some exploding trousers

 

[tlpeter]

Kyle, 64bit is supported but only not for XP
So that should not be a problem

ACS - Implement IP Office
ACA - Implement IP Telephony -- ACA - Design IP Telephony
ACA - Voice Services Management
______________
Women and cats can do as they please and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea!

 

[kholladay]

Tom, 1XP nor CCR are supported on XP, 64-bit or otherwise.

Andy, I don't even expect to get the latest HDTV resolution on a TV that is 2 years old. Nor do I expect to play the latest video games on a PC that is 2 years old. For that matter I don't expect my 2 year old mobile phone to run the latest applications. Why should I expect a PC to run my applications for my phone system to function any different?


Kyle Holladay
ACA-I, ACA Call Center, ACS-I, ACS-M, TIA-CTP, MCP/MCTS Exchange 2007
ACE Implement: IP Office

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it." - Henry Ford