Parallel Systems

[RedTech443]

Hello all.

I have been tasked with setting up CM 6.3 with the latest patches. The current system is 5.2. It has a mix of g450's 430's, and 650's

The new system will be CM 6.3 using the same gateways already in place, with the exception of needing to update all the 8300's to compatible versions, such as 8300D with CM 6.3.

The first phase is to bring up the VM's and get them working, once they are working, I will be adding a few new sties to the new VM, once the new sites are added I will slowly begin to swing over the old sites to the new system once all firmware is updated and such. My question is, when the new sites are on the new VM, the old sites will still be on the old system, is it possible to have the new sites and new VM use the current gateways, even though they are in use still by the old system.

My thought on this is, that I will have to have somehow run the systems in parallel using a trunk from the new to the old system. Is this possible? Or will licensing get in the way?

The reason I need to try and do it this way is that there is over 20 sites, and it would be difficult to have a one big cut over due to time zones and such, if something goes wrong all are down. If I do it this way, I can bring 1 or 2 sites over at a time and no big deal if something goes terribly wrong, only 2 sites are temporary down.


Or is the best way to just set up the new VM's and take each site down one by one, change the MGC list on the gateways bring em back up, make sure licensing is rehosted for the new VM's, and check all peripherals, such as contact center, AAM, and CMS to be sure it is all working? one big hard cutover??

Thanks for advice.

 

[RedTech443]

Forgot to mention I need to also migrate all the date from old system to new system.

 

[kyle555]

Interesting question! With great planning and difficulty!

Where does your call center trunking come in from? Where are your agents?

How will you account for recording, reporting, and queuing across your phased migration?

Basically, it comes with a lot of talking to the customer and planning what they're comfortable living with and what they're not able to live with.

 

[RedTech443]

Yes, Well the recording aspect I think should not give to many problems, as it is pointed to the CLANS and not the ProcR, Since I am not changing the Clan IP I should not have to do very much for that. As for all the calls they come in from various types across 21 gateways spread out over the country, MM710's, MM711,s etc... Some sites have no surviveability at all, phones just plugged into switches, and most other sites have a gateway with in most cases a 8300, some are just g430's with nothing more then a mm711 or mm710 card connected to the current core. A big fun puzzle !

Someone told me that I can run the systems in parallel then slowly migrate all the gateways off the old CM and to the new CM, and maintain minimal downtime. I have not heard of running 2 CM's of any version, with each CM using the same resources from one set of gateways, not sure if it was possible or not.

I am currently trying to come up with a checklist for everything that is needed to be done in a scope of work, then put it into a plan of action and start moving on deploying OVA's, then upgrading firwamre on gateways/Module cards, I figured this is going to be a large chunk of my work. I think I need more talks with customer like you said.


Thanks for help, I work from home, sometimes I need to bang my head against a digital wall (forums) to come up with ideas..

 

[kyle555]

You can stand up 2 CMs and migrate slowly, sure. But they cannot pull from the same DSP pool and they'll be totally fragmented for the purposes f your migration phase.

Perhaps One-X Agent in telecommuter mode all on the new CM, CMS on the new CM, and routing all call center traffic either on the old or new CM to the new CM to the new One-X Agents and telecommutered back to an extension (on the old or new CM) might be part of the answer for you.

Whether SM/SMGR come into play is another discussion, but with some clever UDP strings you might be able to accomplish central signaling for everything and have the flexibility of moving things on your defined timelines.

It would be a lot easier with a consolidated dial plan and network regions though!

 

[pabxdude]

i assume you will be putting in Session Manager?

if so, setting up a trunk between each CM to SM will allow you to do staged migration of the CM system.

What you will need to do is initially keep all of your trunks on the old CM.

then when a site is migrated to the new CM, if there is a trunk/gateway, this will be reconfigured to register to the new CM.

on the old CM, to allow station to station dialing to the phones on the new CM, you can do Uniform Dial Plan config on the old CM to push these calls to the SIP trunk to SM and onto the new CM.

If you are moving pure phones over to the new CM, no gateways, then UDP config is all thats required.

In using UDP, its easier to migrate a whole number range, ie 100 blocks.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.

 

[mattKnight]

I'm confused.

The way you are intending to do this looks long and painful

I'd do it this way...

Upgrade the remote sites to 6.3 - it's a PITA, but has to be done. and will work with a 5.2.1 core

Then build the 6.3 VM cluster do the licence migration

Install the pre-migration patch on the 5.2.1 core and backup teh translations

Install the translations on the 6.3 core and trun off the 5.2.1 core
Configure the VIP on the 6.3 core to be the same IP as the 5.2.1 core.

Done and home for tea and cakes


I did a similar upgrade - and the cutover was clean and tidy with a minimal downtime


Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

 

[mattKnight]

Oh and the backout is easy...

Turn off the VM hosts and turn on the 5.2.1 core (you will need to remove the pre-migration patch)

Take Care

Matt
I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone.
My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

 

[RedTech443]

I like that approach. I will investigate.