Where to start 4

[mikeydidit]

Good morning all. Please let me begin by letting you know how much I have enjoyed reading the previous post. There is a wealth of knowledge here. I have some career decisions to make and need some guidance. I have been in the telecomm world for about 16 years now and self-maintain a fairly large PBX. Unlike a lot of post I have read here, I can say that I truly love my job. I am at a point here that I need to further my education and I am not sure where the starting point needs to be. The Avaya systems like I have are all going to what is referred to as off-board processors. Basically this is setting a couple of servers in a rack and connecting the cabinets up using fiber links. The problem is that I have little to no experience with servers. Avaya has classes that I can attend on these newer products but I am thinking that I may need to just start with some kind of basic server class (Hardware) and them go to the Avaya classes after I have a better understanding of what I am dealing with. Please forgive me for my ignorance in the server world but I soon have to do something to stay up with this changing of technologies.

Thanks for your time and advice.


Mike Jones
Louisiana State University Health Sciences center

 

[mrdenny]

Server hardware is fairly easy these days (with the exception of the funky telecomm cards that are added in by Avaya, Cisco, etc).

In the past servers were big expensive machines with custom hardware. These days that isn't the case. They are simply standard machines with standard off the shelf parts put into a funny looking 19" wide case which has rail mounts on it.

The trick will be picking up the little quirks that the phone vendors put in the software. I'm sure you are farmiller with the Avaya CMS servers and the last of OS commands that are installed on the server. You'll probably have the same issue here.

Go hit up your network admin guys are have them show you the guts of a server. You'll notice that most of the parts look like the parts in your home PC. There are just more of them. Instead of having a single CPU, there will be 2 or 4 (or more). Instead of having 512 MB of RAM you'll probably have a couple of Gigs. In stead of having one hard drive you'll have several drives hooked up to a RAID card. The drives will probably look funny as they will probably be in a hot swap drive cage instead of screwed directly to the case.

For the most part though, everything should look basically the same.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

(Not quite so old any more.)

 

[mikeydidit]

Thank you for the reply mrdenny. I am just really lost about these. From what you are telling me the server itself shouldn't be that complcated to work on so the software is really where I need to focus my attention??

Mike Jones
Louisiana State University Health Sciences center

 

[MasterRacker]

You've got it. What's in your current PBX? It's really a "server" and a bunch of expansion cards to provide your phone ports and other connections.

The newer PBXes, from a hardware standpoint, are simply rearchitecting to use more standard server hardware and moving the expansion cards into separate racks and redesigning them to communicate more "modernly" witht the server.

At some point you will need to take an Avaya class or two on the new hardware, but, as mrdenny said, the real revolution is happening in the software.

<sub>Jeff
[purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day

I was not born cynical - I earned my cynicism through careful observation of the world around me.</sub>

 

[mikeydidit]

Right now I have a G3R with on-board processors (these are just circuit packs). It has 2 processor carriers that run all the other expansion cabinets. Between the push for VOIP and the manufacture going out of business that made the traditional processors has everything moving towards the server based processors. The end of support has been announced for December 2006 for the traditional processors, so I am trying to do what I can before that time gets here.

Mike Jones
Louisiana State University Health Sciences center

 

[chiph]

While server hardware is no longer as proprietary as it once was, some vendors still add value by adding their own systems management features. IBM eServers have LightPath diagnostics, which light up LEDs next to failed components.

Many companies (IBM, HP-Compaq, Sun) now have secondary service processors (a small PowerPC chip in IBM's case) to run diagnostics and provide for remote reboots. They often have their own network connection separate from the main server NIC, so you can manage these machines even if the main network is down/saturated.

But these are high-dollar machines. The ones that you can buy locally really are nothing more than PCs in a rack-mount case, and are nothing special, technology-wise. They'll often use commodity parts and are easy to work on.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[dennisbbb]

Servers over $50K each, with quad processors are a real beast. You simply cannot run down your local computer parts store to get any parts to fix, even if you know what the problem is. That's why they sell you the 24/7 5 year extended warranty, so they can bring you the parts, and install them as well.

Point is, don't worry about the hardware side of things - all taken care of with a phone call. Just focus on server softwares and their features.

 

[chiph]

Right - buying a high-dollar server without an extended on-site warranty would be a bad move.

I would go ahead and attend the Avaya class. They likely have a list of approved servers, and won't be concentrating on the individual brand differences anyway.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[mikeydidit]

Thank you all for your time and replies. I do have a friend in the networking group that says he will show me the basic layout of the hardware. He is also telling me that even though this will be an Avaya system, it will have some other OS to it. I guess I should start with some sort of Microsoft classes first and then the Avaya class on the S8700’s?
Anyways you have pointed me in a direction now so thanks again..


Mike Jones
Louisiana State University Health Sciences center