Mitel MBG, Daisy Chain and Unified Communicator

[KurpeusLondon]

Hi guys,

I've installed two MBGs (LAN/DMZ) in daisy chain mode. The DMZ one is physical while the Lan one is running on vMAS. My client is now looking at installing Unified Communicator on their vMAS, therefore their MBG in DMZ would be acting as Web Proxy forwarding the traffic to the Unified communicator sitting on vMAS along with MBG.

Do you see any problem with that configuration ? Mitel does not talk much about daisy chaining.

Cheers,

 

[LoopyLou]

Daisy chaining is usually used to simplify working with the customers firewall. What you might also want to do is cluster the MBG in the vMAS with the one on the physical server in the DMZ. The two will share licenses so you don't have to worry about licenses in both places and you then get to use "users and services" in the vMAS to manage the remote users ( if you are running teleworkers ). You get to program a user on the vMAS MBG and it gets shared to the database within the MBG in the DMZ.

You might want to bump up your MBG to 7.1 as there are some security enhancements for teleworkers and the vMAS to 4. In the latest MAS software ( R 4.0 ) UCA management is finally integrated into the "users and services" panel of the MAS server-manager. In previous loads even thought the apps could be co located in the same vMAS, the management was seperate.

There are some limitatios on the UCA/MAS integrated Node. You may want to reach those before upgrading.

Can you tell I just did the online update courses.

I'd tell you a UDP joke but I'm afraid you won't get it. TCP jokes are the best because you always get them.

 

[KurpeusLondon]

Hi LoupyLou,

Thanks for your great response !

However, I find it very odd you can cluster two MBGs together while they are in daisy chain.Does that not defeat the purpose of daisy chaining since by nature the remote workers need to connect to the downstream MBG whereas clustering offers load balancing ?

Cheers,

 

[LoopyLou]

In the case of a physical MBG and a MAS MBG clustering is more for simplfying management i.e using MAS user and services panel to program teleworkers etc. Clustering in this case is simply a means of allowing the pooling of the teleworker licenes between the two MBG's so licenses don't need to be assigned to a particular MBG while allowing the programming from the MAS MBG to be "copied" to the MBG in the DMZ.

Clustering can also be used to load balance and for resilency failover as you point out but I was thinking more about management. Not sure whether load balancing needs both MBG's in the DMZ or not.

Daisey chaining from my understanding is to simplfy access for teleworkers. It allows the cusotmer to open up fewer firewall ports which usually makes them happy.

I'd tell you a UDP joke but I'm afraid you won't get it. TCP jokes are the best because you always get them.