| Cisco TMS Any Cisco TMS / Video people out there? I'm a CUCM / voice guy that is now being thrown into the video realm. I have the following pieces to a puzzle but I'm a bit confused at how they fit together.
Cisco TMS 14
Cisco VCS Control
Cisco VCS Expressway - In the next 6 months
Old Tandberg MCU
Old Tandberg Gateway - With 1 ISDN Line
Old MXP 880 endpoints
My thought is the following. Build up the new install of TMS, I'll add the VCS control to it and then registered endpoints to the VCS control. When I get the VCS Expressway add it to the mix and use it to handle external to internal IP calls.
Where I'm horribly confused is what are these ISDN / IP zones in TMS. I keep thinking of them like regions / locations in CUCM but they don't seem to really have any knobs for BW / codec etc so I'm a bit at a loss.
I have 14 locations with endpoints all IP high BW connected. Is there any reason not to assign all my endpoints into the same IP zone?
Right now all the endpoints are configured H323 I was thinking of changing them to SIP when we switch over to the new infrastructure gear.
Longer term I guess I would build up another CUCM cluster running 9.1+ and then register everything to it. Is my understanding correct that really all TMS does is scheduling of meetings and maintenance of the endpoints (SW upgrades, reporting etc)?
Thanks.
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»tripplehelix.net |
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| Hi there,
I'm a VC specialist from Sydney Australia who specializes in Cisco deployments.
The point of IP zones in TMS is say you have endpoint in three different regions: Asia, USA, Europe. You can then join endpoint and infrastructure to those zones. It will then pick the most appropriate network routing to conserve bandwidth. If 3 systems are in Europe and 1 in USA and you have a bridge it will pick the European bridge (MCU).
Under IP zones you can also specify the outgoing service prefix for ISDN calls. For example it might be 0 for audio or 1 for video. If you use ISDN phone books then TMS can automatically add the prefix.
Overall for your deployment it sounds small so you don't need to worry about IP or ISDN zones. Just make one zone and join everything to that zone.
A few security tips:
1. Deny all registrations to your VCS expressway under local zone.
2. I would disable the ISDN auto attendant and block your service prefix used for ISDN on VCS Expressway.
You can do this under Call policy and a rule like deny incoming calls to 0(.*) that means anyone on the Internet can't use 0 prefix (or whatever it is). Otherwise you may find someone may exploit your ISDN line.
Most of the configuration is VCSc so concentrate your efforts there and read the Cisco deployment guides.
TMS is great for scheduling, phone books, general management .etc |
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| reply to rsaturns
Btw one more thing. CUCM is not able to make Public Internet SIP or H323 video calls so you are better off to continue with VCSc and VCSe and just create a SIP trunk between VCSc and CUCM - to gain the best if both worlds.
CUCM is not a good video gatekeeper yet and VCS still has quite a bit if life left in it due to how powerful and flexible it is.
Again that's all covered in the deployment guides. You also need to ensure your phones are running sip firmware. |
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| Thanks for the the feedback. It had been a while since I posted this and since then I've gotten the VCS control online and much like you said it has all the links / pipes etc. VCSc made a whole lot more sense to me from a CAC and call routing standpoint. I've even built a neighbor zone to my CUCM cluster to utilize it for outbound PSTN access voice only from the video units.
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»tripplehelix.net |
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