vMCD Experience

[slapin]

Just would like to hear opinions.
I was looking at vMCD solution and tried to compare cost of traditional 3300 MCD and vMCD. I could not find any advantages going virtual... The hardware cost is high, you must allocate a lot of resources out of the VMWare host system to MCD, so the benefit of oversubscription is not available. VMWare is not cheap as well, and total cost of hosting platform is way higher then 3300 hardware. Power consumption of ISS (Industry Standard Server) is much higher then 3300 box. The best of all you must have software assurance plan, otherwise in 12 months the system will stop working, so Mitel is trying to start milking its customers. As of now I have migrated all other Mitel solutions where I can afford to deal with non-real-time processing to VMWare and increased dencity of computing. vMCD does not look as attractive as advertised. Sounds like there are serious problems in marketing and business development teams in Mitel.

 

[Supernova99]

VMware offers great stability and a whole host of resiliency over and above the MXe controller
The obvious things are vmotion and High availability (HA) where if a fault is detected the VM is moved to another host and started so eliminating downtime.
The only downside I can think other than the pricing is that it can only be used in a pure IP environment so SIP trunks and no TDM devices, so if you have T1/E1 links you will either require a Mitel controller or migrate to SIP trunks.


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[MitelAU]

Customer who deploy V Motion rely on high availability so it would make sense to have a gateway handling the E1/T1 (If SIP trunking is not an option) which could act as a resilient box and also voicemail as vMCD requires an external voicemail system. e.g. Nupoint.
Also take not that the virtual machine hosting vMCD can be migrated to a different server if it is first powered off which is the opposite to how V Motion is designed to work.

Knowledge is power, thats why we share!

 

[slapin]

According to Engineering Guidelines vMotion and HA is not supported for vMCD. It doesn't make much sence to reserve 4 cores and 2GB of RAM on other powerful VMWare host and keep it available waiting for the primary host to fail. It will not help in the situation when a database or some other internal components of MCD become curropted, so the VMWare image itself will be not functional. Native resilience will require two instances of vMCD on different hosts in any case. All case studies tell about disater recovery plans only. I can have a spare 3300 MXe controller sitting on the shelf or even mounted in the rack and get it up and running within one system reboot time frame, same as moving VMWare image from one host to another. Besides that if you have a massive damage to the infrastructure, recovery time on DR site is far from instanteneous, so the traditional 3300 in resilient configuration is still better and cheaper solution. IMHO
I write all this because there are doubdts in efficiency of the product, as any business is all about money, not the technology. Users really don't care what is inside, they want to pay less and get more. So far I see that I get less for more money plus some marketing hype around virtualization which was there since 1970s, just nobody cared.

 

[IrwinMFletcher]

slapin,

Hardware costs would be higher undoubtedly. However, I don't agree that technology has no part in the business decision. There are enterprises who's IT department will only accept vApps within their core infrastructure. Proprietary hardware is taboo. To them, it's a matter of ease of maintenance.

I believe the concept behind vMCD is that it's simply an option of deployment, an avenue into another market segment, not as a means to displace the current 'traditional' deployments.

 

[MitelAU]

Both of you make valid points. Having either options makes Mitel competitive as it can acommodate for the price and technology conscious customers. At the end of the day it keeps me employed and thats the ultimate goal

Knowledge is power, thats why we share!

 

[LoopyLou]

I think that the real attraction of the vMCD option is for sites with existing VMWare infrastructures.

There may be no i in team but there are three f's in fudge off.

 

[Supernova99]

+1

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[slapin]

How about experation of the "right to use" in 12 months?
I don't feel comfortable with a product for all the money which will stop working if I don't continue to pay. Even Microsoft will let you use Windows NT4 if you purchased the license back in days.

 

[Supernova99]

does it stop? or is it so you can keep updated to the latest software revision?

This is normally how software assurance licencing works with all other Mitel products

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[slapin]

It is specificaly said that it will stop if you drop software assurance. Maybe I'm missing something.

 

[Supernova99]

I will find out for sure
I was certainly not aware of this

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[bobcheese]

I know we (as a Mitel vendor) are looking to create a VMCD infrastructure. However we look at it in a different light to Slapin. As we would incur the cost of setting up the infrastructure and then sell the service to our customers. So in effect we would host this on behalf of the customer for multipul customers making it more accessable for them and obviously more profitable for us.

 

[MitelAU]

I would be incline to use Multi-Instance Communications Director for hosting not vMCD.

Knowledge is power, thats why we share!

 

[LoopyLou]

voipin I agree but as I said before I think the Mitel focus for the product is for an existing vmware site. I know some of our customers that have vmware are very keen. It gives more control back to the IT department and they love that. Now the "thing" that runs the phones is not some black box on the network its a virtual machine in their enviroment that they can back up and restore on their own if something happens. They also don't have to work about hardware ( short of a gateway )and whether that LX or MX they bought a little time ago will support newer loads or has to go into the trash. Now all they have to do is budget for keepin the vmware hardware up to date. A much more attractive option for them.

There may be no i in team but there are three f's in fudge off.

 

[Supernova99]

I too agree with LoopyLou
We have lots of customers who look at the telephone system as a box that works and do not do anything with it once it has been installed.
Then when the need a software upgrade (because they purchased new phones) it suddenly costs them £££££ as the old hardware will not support the new software.
Most IT depts have an annual budget for their servers to keep mission critical databases and applications working and running with both hardware and software/licence support.
Moving to VM, Mitel will now be included in the hardware support upgrades and customers will no longer have to worry about replacing a different type of box as all applications will be hosted on the same hardware.

Slapin,
I can find no documentation about the vApp software nt working after the software assurance has expired.
But as stated above it will now become the norm to keep all software and hardware up to date to esure business continuity.

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[slapin]

In 3300 the huge portion of $$$$ is licenses which can be moved to the new hardware which cost less then 20% of 100 user system and going down with number of users. The lifespan of Mitel hardware was at least 5-6 year until you cannot really move forward.

From MCD Engineering Guidelines for ISS and vMCD:

"The vMCD base software license currently has an expiry time of 12 months from the time it is first activated. Should the software not be upgraded within the 12 month window of being activated, the software will cease to function and telephony functions will terminate. Technically - the system will continue to work until the next reset."

Something like this I saw in few other documents related to software assurance programs.

 

[Supernova99]

Is that saying that if you do not upgrade within 12 months it will stop?
Or you need to upgrade at least once in 12 months to keep it from stopping?

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[slapin]

It is not clear to me. I have sent this question to our VAR, so waiting what they will find from Mitel directly.
I'm trying to make a decision which can cost a lot, so I really appreciate all input.