I went to the S8710's about 4 months ago from the G3R V11. The announcements will be OK without changing them to the Val Boards. You will not be able to restore them is the only drawback.
The most tool is nice to say the least. I would look at buying my own vs. the provider getting it. The markup was unbelievable. I would guess you could get it for about $150.00 max and they charged me $1200.00 for it. The same goes for the Cat 5E patch cables. Red and Green cables they charged me over $100.00 each for I can get for less than $20.00.
The only real problem we had during the cutover was the TDM bus terminator. The new carriers you will get are Cat 5 rated. The twist of the cables at least doubles the size of the bundles on the backplane of the carriers. This makes it very difficult to place the terminators and bus cables on without bending any pins. We bent one pin and it drove us nuts for several days until we took the switch down again and found it.
We burned in the servers for about a month before we cut. This gave us time to make sure these were stable before putting them into production.
The license files is the next thing to look out for.
Have your provider make sure everything you had turned on is still on. It is impossible to change this on a weekend which is when most people do their cuts. Make sure the offer you get will support your packs.
It took us about 45 minutes to swap out the processor carriers to port carriers. The IPSI's were preprogrammed in other slots (which also saved us some time.)
It’s early here, so that is all that I can come up with BC. (Before Coffee). If I think of anything else during the day to day I will post it for you.
"You don't stop playing because you get old. You get old because you stopped playing."
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