IP Office System Manager 1

[divemaster1980]

I have been told there is a System Manager package for IP Office that I could use on my corporate network to manage many different systems that are deployed across our company. Everytime I ask one of our vendors for the specs for this to run off a VM, they come back with asking tons of questions about how many locations, what version, and want both XLM and Config files before they will even tell us what we have asked for. Does anyone on this forum have this information?

 

[kyle555]

yes...

Short answer, System Manager can control IP Offices.
Any System Manager can control IP Offices current as of that SMGR release.

I wouldn't recommend it just for managing IPOs if you're not at least at 10.0.

I use it because I have to - I've got branch IPOs as survivable gateways off of Aura where 96xx SIP phones register to the IPOs when the WAN is out.

You'd probably hate it. There are benefits and it does streamline things, but the legwork to get started and get around bugs is a pain. As in, every IPO gets it's security settings changed to "access" not being "unrestricted" or "server edition" but "System Manager". And when something goes sideways and you have to edit the config in your own Manager, you have to go in the security settings first and set it Unrestricted before you do that. And then every time you sync SMGR's config to the IPO it goes back to lock down the security settings.

The endpoint templates in 10.0/10.1 use Webmanager within SMGR. in 9.0/9.1, you launch a thick Windows Manager Lite from the SMGR webpage to change a phone. It's tedious.

And they all have to enroll to System Manager's certificate authority, preferably via SCEP, and it's a one-by-one manual process, and they likely reboot to do it and nobody will help you when the enrollment fails.

If you got 100+ IPOs and a big department of people who might login to do MACDs, then yeah, SMGR as a single sign on can have huge benefits. Once you go down that path, you might find that whatever you're doing now however slow steady and tedious it may be is more reliable and easy for any of your IPO people to figure out.

 

[holdmusic34]

Cloud operations Manager is available for SE deployments on releases higher than or equal to R11.

A madman with a taste for speed.

 

[VoIP Numpty]

What do you want to do that the normal Manager and the "Known Units File" can't do?

In these days of Web manager just a dedicated page with a link for each system would make getting to each system easier.
For managing things like the directory it may be easier to convince all the IP Office systems to get it from one system (or set up a dedicated server)

And finally as holdmusic34 says there's the Cloud operations manager (doesn't have to be cloud) in R11.0, that will apparently give you a status of each system under your control, as well as give a quick router to admin, but I've not looked at that yet.

 

[janni78]

The point of using System Manager is that you can manage all your Avaya systems with one interface (both Aura and IP Office) and can apply rights to who can access and do what.

I tried it out a bit for fun a couple of years ago but since it locked down regular Manager access it was not worth it to me.
If you have a large organisation with a lot of installed units it might be worth the time to get it working properly.

"Trying is the first step to failure..." - Homer

 

[divemaster1980]

If I am understanding you guys, I have 4 options to choose from:
1. Continue as we are now and just use the IPO Manager to maintain each site, just use a single server/PC to do so.
2. Setup a new server and get System Manager to manage all sites, upgrade to R10 or higher for all systems.
3. Setup WebManager, will require upgrading all sites to R10 or higher.
or
4. Setup Cloud Operations Manager solution to manage them, will require upgrading all sites to R11 or higher.

Thanks for all the input, this is a retail company with over 500 locations of which about 120 currently have an IP Office running at there location. The others consist of Nortel, Vodovi, Panasonic, Avaya Partner, or nothing at all (these sites are small and have a couple of multiline phones with POT's lines). As the old systems die we have started to standardize with the IP Office system. Currently the IPO sites have version 8.x, 9.x, or 10.1. To date none are on the network, I am trying to get all information so that I can present this as a project for funding to put all current systems on the network and upgrade to at least version 10.1. Then possibly put a management tool in place so that I can get to any one of them from the corporate office. Then one by one replace any non-IPO site with an IPO on the network so we can reduce our cost of maintenance. Currently because none of our systems are on the network, we send a tech to each site as problems arise, then if parts are necessary we order them and send tech back out once parts are in. By putting all sites on a standard platform it would reduce our cost of maintenance and make any MACD changes must more simple.

 

[holdmusic34]

Keep in mind my caveat. Cloud Operations Manager is for Server Edition deployments only.


A madman with a taste for speed.

 

[IPGuru]

Divemaster1980 based on your description of the sites I see no reason why the standard IP Office manager would not suffice, had your site all been in an SCN then possibly

I maintain over 3000 sites for multiple customers & have never had the need for anything else.





Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear

 

[kyle555]

I'm not saying you need to be at 10.0, I'm just saying it's less tedious to edit sets because System Manager doesn't toss up a thick Windows Manager Lite.

On my SMGR 7.1, if I edit an endpoint on a IPO 9.1, I get Windows Manager Lite open. If i edit a 10.0 phone, I get Web Manager within the System Manager.

I'll say this on the subject: it's a great idea and with enough pain, you can make it work. I've found Avaya's efforts in this to be very disappointing. When you talk about System Manager, you're talking about a Java application server with all sorts of management tie-ins - it can manage Aura Messaging, Session Managers, CMs, CS1ks, CallPilots, etc. There's no one guy who does all of that. There's a System Manager core team responsible for the guts of it, and each product house at Avaya ultimately owns their plugin. With everything going on with IP Office, I feel their development efforts towards SMGR integration have been lackluster at best.

You want real world feedback?
See the attached picture. I promise you my system names are consistent and the stuff I blanked out is the same on every line. When my MACD team was having trouble and I was helping them out, I absolutely flipped my lid when I saw what they need to do.
Basically, when I need to click a drop-down menu to pick which IPO to provision a user on, that drop-down list IS NOT IN ORDER! As in, if you have hostnames IPO0001, IPO0002, IPO0003, etc, that dropdown will never actually list them in any order. So you get carpal tunnel and tire out your eyes scrolling through a list looking for a needle in a haystack. That's the level of attention to detail you're flirting with!