Monthly Archives: February 2015

CUCM Phone Firmware Update

  1. Go to cisco.com, search for your phone model and download the relevant firmware
  2. Copy firmware to a SFTP server (I run Solarwind’s free SFTP server on my laptop)
  3. Log into CUCM Pub: OS Administration–>Software Upgrade–>Install/Upgrade–>Remote Filesystem
  4. Go through the steps to connect to SFTP and upload the phone firmware
  5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 on your CUCM Subs
  6. On the Pub and Subs, log into Serviceability–>Tools–>Control Center – Feature Services
  7. Select the server you are logged into (Pub or Sub)
  8. Restart Cisco Tftp

On 10.5.2, the device defaults update automatically, and next time the phone reboots it will upgrade it’s firmware.

Cisco CUCM, CUPS, Unity Upgrade to 10.5.2

I recently upgraded a Cisco Call Manager environment from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2, and since I had to figure out all the upgrade steps, I figured I’d post my process.  I used the upgrade guide found here: Cisco Upgrade Guide

  1. Login to CM Publisher Disaster Recovery System
    1. Backup–>Backup Device–>Add New (if not already present)
    2. Backup–>Manual Backup–>All features–>Start Backup
  2. Login to Unity Disaster Recovery System
    1. Backup–>Backup Device–>Add New (if not already present)
    2. Backup–>Manual Backup–>All features–>Start Backup
  3. Backup all virtual machines (I used XSI backup to do this)
  4. Snapshot all virtual machines within VMware
  5. Stop LDAP sync interval on Call Manager and Unity (I use UDS for IM)
    1. This is recommended so that LDAP doesn’t attempt to sync during the upgrade
  6. Stop Extension Mobility service–>CM Pub and Sub–>Cisco Unified Serviceability
  7. Login to CM Pub, Unity Pub and IM&P Pub
    1. OS Administration–>Software Upgrades–>Remote filesystem (or DVD drive)
      1. Upload new iso and click “Do not reboot after Upgrade”
  8. Wait for the all the Pub’s to load the new ISO
  9. Login to CM Sub, Unity Sub, and IM&P Sub
    1. OS Administration–>Software Upgrades–>Remote filesystem (or DVD drive)
      1. Upload new iso and click “Do not reboot after upgrade”
  10. Login to CM Pub
    1. OS Administration–>Settings–>Version–>Switch Version
    2. Wait for Pub to come back up
  11. Login to CM Sub
    1. OS Administration–>Settings–>Version–>Switch Version
    2. Wait for Sub to come back up
  12. Check database status
    1. SSH to CM Pub: utils dbreplication runtimestate, value should be “2”
  13. Check phone functionality
  14. Check version via cli: show version active
  15. Verify Extension Mobility service is running
  16. Done upgrading Call Manager!
  17. Login to Unity Pub
    1. OS Administration–>Settings–>Version–>Switch Version
  18. Wait for Unity Pub to come back up, try checking voicemail from a phone
  19. Login to Unity Sub
    1. OS Administration–>Settings–>Version–>Switch Version
  20. Check database status
    1. SSH to Unity Pub: utils dbreplication runtimestate, value should be “2”
  21. Done upgrading Unity!
  22. Login to CM Pub and disable IM HA: System–>Presence Redundancy Groups
  23. Login to IM&P Pub
    1. OS Administration–>Settings–>Version–>Switch Version
    2. This server took a while to come back up, it has to wait for the Cisco DB to initialize and then the rest of the services will start up
  24. Wait for IM&P Pub to come back up with all services started
  25. Login to IM&P Sub
    1. OS Administration–>Settings–>Version–>Switch Version
    2. This server also took a while to come back up, it has to wait for the Cisco DB to initialize and then the rest of the services will start up
  26. Check database status
    1. SSH to IM&P Pub: utils dbreplication runtimestate, value should be “2”
  27. Log into CM Pub and turn on HA for IM cluster
    1. HA will take a couple minutes to re-initialize
  28. Done upgrading IM&P!
  29. Re-enable LDAP sync on Call Manager and Unity

The upgrade went pretty smoothly, with only one hiccup.  After I upgraded the Unity Pub, I couldn’t access the Unity Sub webpage in order to switch the version and upgrade.   The webpage just wouldn’t load.  I could have restarted Tomcat and tried to get the webpage working, but I decided to proceed with the upgrade, and switched the version from cli with: utils system switch-version The upgrade was successful and the entire environment is working great!

Backup VMware Virtual Machines

If you need a free, open-source alternative for backing up your virtual machines, look no further than XSI Backup.  Before I did an upgrade to some VM’s I wanted to completely back them up (not just a snapshot), so I downloaded XSI Backup here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsibackup/

Once downloaded, copy it to the /opt folder on your ESXi host. Then you can run it and backup to a datastore that ESXi has mounted.  For example, I want to backup all my VM’s to my NFS datastore, I run:

/opt/xsibackup –backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/nfs-datastore/backups –backup-type=running

Running that command will backup all the VM’s in real-time to the datastore.  You can run /opt/xsibackup –help to see all the variables you can specify, including backing up specific VM’s and sending email alerts.