New CCM 4.1

[Burgal]

I'm planning on getting a full CCM 4.1 system with 100 phones
10 7961g, 70 7941g and 20 7911g.

Replacing the entire network switches with
Dell 6024 gigabit aggregate swtich
and
9 dell 3448p 48port POE edge switches.

Anyone had a config similar to this with any advice that I sohuld know about before I go ahead?

 

[ADB100]

Use Cisco PoE switches instead of HP ones.....

Cisco IP Phones rely on CDP to discover the Voice VLAN - only Cisco switches offer this. Other IP Telephony providers (Nortel, Mitel, Ericsson) use DHCP Vendor Specific options in the Access VLAN DHCP scope to inform the IP Phone of the Voice VLAN tag (802.1q tag), whereas with Cisco IP Phones rely on CDP. Without CDP you will have to manually configure each IP Phone for the Voice VLAN's. This is OK for a small deployment but I would steer away from it. Plus if you make any changes to the Voice VLAN you will need to manually reconfigure the IP Phones.

The QoS support on the Cisco switches (3550, 3560, 3750 etc) is much richer and the configuration information is more readily available. I think you are heading for a complicated and lengthy installation if you opt for non Cisco switches (in the access layer anyway).

HTH

Andy

 

[Burgal]

Thanks for your feedback.

Unfortunately there is over a $35,000 price tag difference between Cisco and Dell switches. I think for 35,000 I can manually configure the vlan on 100 phones. I'd have to touch those phones to assign their profile anyway.

I guess you could say it's a smaller deployment.

 

[pndscm]

I agree with ADB100. Buy Cisco 35X0's for the ports you need for IP Phones at least. You are asking for more problems than you think. List price for a 48 port PoE 3560 is about $6500 and you can get some huge discounts on these. Unless the phones are spread out through 6 closets, you only need 3 of them. There are reasons why other equipment is cheaper.

 

[Burgal]

heh, that's funny, cause the phones are spread out through six closets.

And yes, even after discounts there is more than a $35,000 price tag difference.

If I don't go to the dell switches, I can't get the new PBX at all. It takes the project out of budget. I would have to stick with my crappy aging option 11 with dying handsets.

We're non-profit....

In an ideal world I would get the cisco units...

 

[ADB100]

If you are non-profit I would expect you to receive some serious price support from Cisco. Speak to your account team.

Cisco now have the Catalyst Express 500 series switches for 'entry level'. Although I wouldn't normally suggest these (there is no serial console interface or CLI), but they may be the solution for you. They have a 24-port PoE version with Gigabit uplinks.

Not deploying Cisco switches for a Cisco CallManager solution is just a disaster waiting to happen IMO. If you had picked another IP Telephony solution such as Nortel, Ericsson, Mitel or Avaya then the solution would be easier with Dell switches. I would still look at Cisco as the 1st choice though due to the granular level you can configure these things.

HTH

Andy

 

[jneiberger]

Burgal, where is your non-profit located?

 

[Burgal]

Vancouver, Canada.

 

[jneiberger]

Have you been working with a large Cisco reseller that can get you the best discounts? Do you know who your Cisco account executive is?

 

[Burgal]

Yes, Telus. The Largest in Western Canada. They're even offering a 38% discount on the cisco pricing and it's still $35,000 more than the dell switches.

 

[jneiberger]

Ouch. You're not going to get a better discount than that unless you're buying a lot of stuff. It would be interesting to see if Cisco had any programs for non-profits that might be able to help you out.

 

[jneiberger]

Out of curiosity, do you really need a full-blown CallManager, or would CME work?

 

[jneiberger]

I'm checking with my Cisco account manager right now to see if there is any way they can help you out since you're a non-profit. If I get an affirmative answer from her, I'll need to get your contact info. I'll let you know what I find out.

 

[Burgal]

Telus sponsors our organization, so we have a "Best Corporate Pricing" agreement with them, that's why they're giving us a "38%" discount. However their prices compared to market prices after the discount works out to be an average savings of only 10%.

The pricing they're offering us on the switches are:
Catalyst 3750 24 10/100/1000T Standard Multilayer Image
for 4832 CDN

Catalyst 3560 48 10/100 PoE + 4 SFP Standard Image
5235 CDN

1000BASE-T SFP for 318 CDN

 

[jneiberger]

Burgal, would CallManager Express work for you? That would save you some money of a full-blown CallManager installation. Unless there are some higher-end features that you need, CME will handle 100 phones with no problem.

 

[Burgal]

Already tried that. The CME skips out on some of the features we'd like, and doesn't come close to compensating for the overpriced cisco switches.

 

[jneiberger]

I was just thinking in terms of getting your overall costs down. What MCS servers are you looking at? The 7825?

 

[Burgal]

It was going to be the 7825, now we're getting HP DL-320s instead.

 

[Burgal]

And for some reason the software upgrade maintenance is 41% of the purchase price of the software?!?!

$17,000 cdn for 2 CCM4.1 and 1 UM4.0
$7,000 cdn a YEAR for software upgrade support?!?!?
Might as well just go and buy the new versions...

 

[jneiberger]

Is that the total for SMARTnet for all three applications? If you get a decent discount on SMARTnet, it shouldn't be that much. Then again, I'm think in USD, so maybe that's about right.