MXe-III-L Controllers and MiVB 8

[AH64Armament]

I have a customer that has 2 CX-II's, 4 MXe-III's and 5 MXe (Gen 1 or 2).
We're good to go on the CX-II's and MXe-III's, but the Gen1 and 2 MXe's must be replaced.

Each site is self-survivable with their own external trunking.

So as to standardize on as much hardware as possible, we were hoping to do MXe-III's for the hardware upgrades. But since they're no longer available through Mitel channels, we're stuck with the MXe-III-L controllers.

I have asked Sales Engineering and they toed the Mitel line that though the MXe-III-L allows you to install MiVB 8 to it, they do not support it in a production environment until it's running MiVB 9+.

I don't wish to have dis-similar software versions running across a cluster of 13 phone systems and MiCollab for very long. Knowing this customer, we will have months between installations of the MXe-III-L's due to a large amount of DNIC and ONS still on PER nodes.
I'm pushing them as much as possible, but it's a government agency and we all know they'd move backwards if they could.

That said, has anyone run an MXe-III-L in a production environment with MiVB 8.x for any duration? Will it work? My guess is that it will, but I'd like to know for sure.

If I could get a handful of MXe-III's, I would.

 

[Lundah]

I've never worked on much less seen the L variant, but when it was released I thought it required MiVB 9.1. You might have to either bite the bullet on that, or gamble on used/grey market MXE-III controllers.

 

[AH64Armament]

I was thinking that too about getting some other sourced MXe-III's and doing the project that way. It would make things a lot easier overall, and would avoid this speculation of if things will work or not.

I was, and am hopeful that the MXe-III-L would function running MIVB 8.
I'm thinking that this might be similar to the PER nodes - they aren't "supported above MCD 6", but they do function at MiVB 7 and 8... I had to get a letter from Mitel indicating that they would in fact "work" but they will not support the PER nodes or FIM modules should we have a need for calling support.

 

[Lundah]

I think there was difference in the chipsets on the L chassis that required the 9.1 release.

 

[SXWizard]

The MXe III-L does require release 9.1 or higher. Fro the Help file:
MiVoice Business Release 9.1
New Hardware and Tools
A new controller, MXe III-L (where L stands for LAN), is added to the family of 3300 ICP controllers. The MXe III-L controller is a functional replacement for the MXe III controller. The MXe III-L controller has the same capabilities as the MXe III controller except the following:
No WAN port
No redundant L2 connectivity
No IGMP filtering
Equipped with 10/100 MB Ethernet LAN port

 

[Billz66]

id go the other way - use 9 on the mxeII-Ls
cluster should be ok
xnet trunks will function .



If I never did anything I'd never done before , I'd never do anything.....

 

[AH64Armament]

Reviewing the tech notes from the MXe-III-L, The controller main board is the only thing that's different from the MXe-III.
The RTC and E2T Processor cards are the same. The MMC modules are the same.

The upgrade processes indicate that you can install MiVB 8 to the L, but says to upgrade immediately.

I've had issues with clusters and XNET trunks being glitchy in long-term different software loads, so I try and ensure they are all running the same version.
Knowing this customer and how they're dragging this project out, I would think they would be leaving this go as long as they can get away with.

Unfortunately they have about a dozen PER nodes still that they were supposed to have eliminated 2 years ago.

I'm looking for some New Old Stock MXe-III's for this project.