Expert Reference Series of White Papers

Virtualizing Your
Cisco Unified
Communications
with Cisco UCS
1-800-COURSESwww.globalknowledge.com

Virtualizing Your Cisco Unified

Communications with Cisco UCS
Jeffrey W. Hall, VCI, VCP4, CCSI, CCNP Voice, CCNP Security, Datacenter
Support Specialist, CCIP, CCDP, CCNP, MCT, MCITP, MCSE

Introduction
Datacenters can be really interesting places to see.
Whether your datacenter looks disastrous, like this:

or nice and neat, like this...

it is clear that the traditional datacenter design methodologies are outdated. Between having dozens of racks
filled with hundreds and even thousands of servers, many thousands of feet in cabling, or the out-of-control heating and cooling costs that were incurring, there has to be a better way of doing things.
Do you manage a complex Cisco Unified Communications environment? If you do, then youre already fully
aware of how sensitive real-time traffic, such as voice and video, are to such things as latency, jitter, and packet
loss. Now, throw this system into the same infrastructure with the rest of your data, and you dont always have
the best recipe for success. Sure, there are tactics that we implement for Unified Communications, such as dedicated voice VLANs and Quality of Service mechanisms like Low Latency Queuing. However, at the end of the day,
all of these packets still have to compete with the many other types of traffic in your datacenter infrastructure;
and lets face it, a simpler architecture is a faster and more easily managed architecture.
This white paper highlights the advantages of virtualizing your Cisco Unified Communications using the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). To fully appreciate these benefits, well start with a couple of short primers on the
Cisco UCS and Unified Communications.

Copyright 2011 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved.

The Unified Computing System

The Cisco UCS is truly a unified architecture
that integrates three major datacenter technologies into a single, coherent system:
1. Computing
2. Network
3. Storage
Instead of being simply the next generation
of blade servers, the Cisco UCS is an innovative architecture designed from scratch to be
highly scalable, efficient, and powerful with
one-third less infrastructure than traditional
blade servers. The net effect of this is dramatically reduced power and cooling costs and
easier, centralized management.
The Cisco UCS is made up of the following major components:
1. Cisco 6100-series Fabric Interconnects
2. Cisco UCS 5100-series Blade Server Enclosures
3. Cisco 2100-series Fabric Extenders
4. Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers
5. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-mounted Servers
6. Cisco UCS Converged Network Adapters (CNA)
7. Cisco UCS Manager
Gone are the days of disparate (siloed) systems all across the datacenter with their many different management
tools and networking infrastructure. Here to stay is a unified architecture that offers these key features:

1.

Hardware State Abstraction

With Cisco UCS, we can use service profiles that represent the physical characteristics of a server that make
it unique from other servers (MAC address, WWN, UUID, BIOS, boot order, etc.). We are then able to attach
these service profiles to individual servers. So, as long as the individual blade servers are booting from either a
PXE Server or doing a SAN boot, we can achieve a stateless server capability by moving the identity of a server
(profile) to any physical blade server when needed.

2.

Unified Fabric that provides Lossless connectivity

Within the UCS architecture, a single cable is used for all signaling transmissions, regardless of whether its data or
storage. Additionally, through the use of Priority-Based Flow Control (PFC), we can replicate the same capability
within Ethernet that Fiber Channel already has of ensuring that frames are never dropped.
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3.

Virtualized adapters

Virtualization is a key enabling technology within the Cisco UCS architecture, and the network adapters within
the individual servers are no exception. While there are multiple adapter models, there are specific PCIe adapters
within the C-Series servers and mezzanine adapters within the B-Series blade servers that allow for multiple virtual
network adapters (vNICs) to be present over the single physical network adapters. This capability allows for the
stateless capability that was previously mentioned.

4.

Expanded memory

One of the key performance enhancements in Cisco UCS is the ability to virtualize the physical memory installed in
the server DIMM slots. This virtualization allows us to increase the effective capability of the physical memory to
four times the original capacity. This is a significant technology, since it allows us to use cheaper memory and still
achieve a greater memory footprint.

5.

Unified management

The Cisco UCS Manager (UCSM) allows for many blade servers and their related networking and storage connectivity, regardless of whether its Ethernet or Fiber Channel, to be managed within a single and very intuitive
Graphical User Interface (GUI). Additionally, a very powerful Command-Line Interface (CLI) is provided as is an
XML Application Programming Interface (API). These management capabilities provide a very powerful and
centralized management functionality that is simply not present in other vendor solutions.

Cisco Unified Communications Primer

Modern business communication capabilities have evolved tremendously from the days of analog and digital
telephony. Back then, we relied on Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) located physically at each site to control
the analog and digital signaling for local phones and other devices, such as fax machines and overhead paging
solutions. Likewise, the PBX also defined and controlled the signaling of external trunks to the telephony carriers
central office (CO).
Today, the implementation of server-based solutions based on the TCP/IP protocol suite has become standard
practice. These newer IP-based PBXs fulfill exactly the same role as traditional PBXs by housing the dial plan;
identity of endpoints, gateways, trunks, etc.; device features like Call Park, pickup, Music on Hold (MoH), conferencing, etc.; and other communications configurations.
While the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) is at the heart of Ciscos UC design, there are many
additional components that greatly increase the organizations capabilities to stay connected.
For example, a few of these additional server-based resources include:
1.

Cisco Unified Presence

This feature-rich UC component uses standards-based protocols such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and
the Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (XCP) to work with a range of native and third-party client applications.
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Users are able to initiate such activities as instant messaging, presence, click to call, phone control, voice, video,
visual voicemail, and web collaboration. Cisco Unified Presence lays the foundation to deliver enterprise IM and
Cisco rich, network-based, presence-enabled collaboration capabilities.
2.

Cisco Unity Connection

Cisco Unity Connection is a Linux-based appliance that provides a robust unified messaging platform for Ciscos
Unified Communications suite of products. This product allows the user to access and manage voice messages
in a variety of ways, using his/her email inbox, web browser, Cisco Unified IP Phone, smartphone, Cisco Unified
Personal Communicator, etc.
Additionally, Unity Connection provides speech recognition features for mobile users, ensuring the user can safely
and quickly manage and access voicemail while driving, or otherwise preoccupied.
3.

Cisco Unified Contact Center

This powerful set of products comes in two variations:

1. Enterprise Delivers intelligent contact routing, call treatment, network-to-desktop computer telephony
integration (CTI), and multichannel contact management for large-scale enterprise deployments
2. Express -- Designed for midmarket, enterprise branch, or corporate departments requiring a sophisticated customer interaction management solution for up to 400 agents
Ciscos UC products have evolved over the years from Windows applications installed on Microsoft Server platforms to predominantly appliance-based solutions installed on Linux platforms. The included system, network,
and user features have increased steadily with each release, but the most dramatic improvements can be seen in
the most recent version of the Cisco UC, currently in version 8.x. As of version 8.0(2), virtualized deployment is
fully supported, when installed on the Cisco UCS architecture.

UC on UCS Requirements
Cisco supports virtualizing your Unified Communications solutions on the UCS system, according to these requirements/considerations:
1. Cisco UC applications supported in a virtual environment include:
1.

Unified Communications Manager 8.0(2)

2.

Unified Contact Manager Express 8.0(2)

3.

Cisco Unified Presence 8.0(1)

4.

Cisco Unity 7.0(2)

5.

Cisco Unity Connection 8.0(2)

2. The only hypervisor supported initially is VMware vSphere ESXi version 4.x which includes more of the
real-time enhancements required for UC than ESX. Any other hypervisor versions, products or vendors
are not supported.
3. Bare-mental/physical/non-virtualized installs are not supported.
4. Dedicated CPU/RAM/Storage is required for the VMs, oversubscription is not yet supported.

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5. VMware supported SAN storage is required.

6. 1-4 Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) Virtual Machines per server, dependent on the
model, with MCS 7845 parity per VM (7,500 users).
7. Application co-residency is not yet supported the ultimate goal is mix and match.
8. Only Basic features supported (e.g., copy VM, restart VM, HA, SRM), Advanced features are deferred
to future versions (e.g., vMotion, snapshots, DRM, templates, DPM, etc.) .
9. The hardware BIOS, firmware, and drivers are managed by UCS and VMware, not by CUCM.
10. The boot order is controlled by the VMware virtual machines BIOS instead of by the CUCM
Application.

So Whats the Big deal?

So, now that weve discussed who the major players are, lets take a closer look at why its really such a big deal
that we can now deploy our Unified Communications products as part of our virtual infrastructure, using the
Cisco UCS.

1.

Virtualization simplifies the way we do business

Once again, datacenters can be very interesting and challenging environments. Due to the drastic decrease in
server prices over the years, we have gone from large monolithic mainframe servers that process many applications to one that utilizes much cheaper and smaller servers used for individual applications.
This change in datacenter design means that we have drastically increased the number of physical servers from
a few large ones to hundreds and even thousands of very small ones. This created a problem known as server
sprawl. The result of this was many, many servers added to our datacenter that each ran a single application.
These servers were extremely underutilized and collectively created excessive amounts of heat. Since this heat
had to be dissipated with appropriate cooling measures, this resulted in equally excessive power and cooling
costs.
In modern datacenters, we are now able to virtualize these many servers onto a relatively few physical servers.
Although it depends on the type and utilization of a particular application, a normal rule of thumb has shown
that we can effectively virtualize 10-15 servers per physical host. This represents a significant reduction in a datacenters footprint and heat generation. For our Unified Communications servers, we are currently able to virtualize up to four servers per physical host. However, this capability will certainly increase with each new version.

2.

Lower CAPEX and OPEX

Given that datacenters are incredibly expensive to run (they require expensive real estate, use incredibly large
amounts of electrical power, and have high operational costs), virtualization of our datacenters represent a
reduction in a companys Capital Expenditures (CAPEX), but more significantly, their Operational Expenditures
(OPEX).

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One of the highest operational costs within a datacenter is the servers themselves. Modern single-purpose servers
have been shown to only have 5-10% utilization, on average. Conversely, if your servers are using a large percentage of your datacenters power, like 75%, then we have a very inefficient scenario. By virtualizing these servers, we can now combine many servers (10-15) onto a single physical server, which raises the overall utilization
significantly and, therefore, lowers the power requirements, relative to running 10 to 15 separate servers. This
alone represents a savings of millions of dollars in a years time, according to feedback from many companies.
Additional benefits can be seen beyond the reduced power requirements. In a traditional datacenter, many
smaller servers generate a LOT of heat, which must be dissipated via cooling efforts. The yearly cooling costs
are extremely expensive; but just as bad, strict formulas dictate that we can place only so many servers within so
many of square feet in the datacenter. Through virtualization, we are able to place a greater number of servers per square foot of the datacenter with reduced cooling requirements. This equates in a much more efficient
datacenter that is more productive and profitable.
Likewise with these other operational costs, cabling represents a HUGE investment in a typical datacenter. For
every server that is virtualized, we are able to reduce the physical cabling required to connect that server. Additionally, when implemented within the Cisco UCS, we are able to take advantage of Unified Fabric and further
reduce cabling requirements, since we can send both LAN and Storage signaling over the same cables.

3.

Improved Availability

In a traditional datacenter, if one of your Unified Communications servers crashes, you normally must restart that
device manually. This represents a potentially significant outage for that UC device.
When we virtualize our UC servers, we can take advantage of VMwares great tools like High Availability (HA)
and Site Recovery Manager (SRM).
W
 ith HA, the failed virtual server will be automatically restarted, which saves a significant amount of
downtime, resulting in greater productivity and profits from that server.
W
 ith SRM, we can provide Disaster Recovery by quickly failing over a virtual machine from a main production site to a secondary site while ensuring the VM remains active.

4. Licensing
One of the great benefits that well see when virtualizing our UC servers on the Cisco UCS platform is that we can
achieve actual platform mobility. On traditional Cisco Media Convergence Servers (MCS), the UC license is tied to
the physical servers MAC address of the primary network interface card (NIC). This means that the instance of
the UC application is always tied to that physical device. But what if that server hardware fails? This means that
we are forced to endure some amount of outage until we can build a new server.
With the Cisco UCS, we are able to create Service Profiles that represent the identity of the actual server. We can
then associate this service profile with any of the blade servers within the UCS 5108 chassis. By doing this, we
can simply associate our UC server with a new blade server, if needed.

Copyright 2011 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved.

Of course, you may ask how this is possible when the UC license is tied to the physical NIC of the server. Within
Cisco UCS, we are able to build whats called a MAC license, which is based on several configuration components of the UC server:
1. Time zone
2. NTP server
3. NIC speed
4. Hostname
5. IP Address
6. IP Mask
7. Gateway Address
8. Primary DNS
9. SMTP server
10. Certificate Information (Organization, Unit, Location, State, Country)
Once the MAC license has been configured, it can simply be associated with the Service Profile and applied to
whichever physical blade server is needed.

5.

Ease of installation in UCS using OVF templates

One of the barriers to entry, when it comes to UC servers, is the general complexity required to build and configure these applications properly. There is a considerable learning curve required, which requires the presence or
availability of administrators or engineers with these specific skillsets.
With Cisco UCS, configuration templates are available that allow administrators to build and configure complex
UC servers, often with little to no knowledge of datacenter requirements to install UC applications. To make
things even easier, these templates are freely downloadable from Cisco.
The templates conform to an industry-recognized virtualization format called the OVF, or Open Virtualization Format. The OVF is an open standard for describing a virtual machine template. These templates will actually come
with an .ova extension. The Open Virtualization Archive (OVA) is an open standard to package and distribute
these templates. For most supported UC applications, a preconfigured OVA file is provided by Cisco and must be
used. Otherwise the customer must manually build OVA files that meet the indicated requirements.

Summary
In this white paper, we have seen the incredible benefits of not only optimizing our datacenters with the revolutionary new Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), but further optimizing our Unified Communications infrastructure onto the UCS for even greater efficiency, performance, and savings.
With the advent of integrated solutions like the Cisco UCS, the datacenter has undergone a major paradigm
shift in our methodology of both design and operational management. Furthermore, with the greatly increased

Copyright 2011 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved.

knowledge we have of the consequences of our designs to not only our bottom line, but to the environment
as well, we now know how important it is to make our datacenters as efficient as possible while still increasing
performance and profitability.

References
1. Unified Communications on Cisco UCS: The final vDC frontier, By The Bell website, http://www.bythebell.com/2010/04/unified-communications-on-cisco-ucs-the-final-vdc-frontier.html
2. Cisco Unified Communications on the Cisco Unified Computing System, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/
netsol/ns1067/index.html
3. Cisco DocWiki Unified Communications Virtualization, http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_Virtualization
4. Unified Communications Goes Global, Cisco TechWise TV, http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns914/
networking_solutions_program_home.html#archives-a-1

Learn More
Learn more about how you can improve productivity, enhance efficiency, and sharpen your competitive edge.
Check out the following Global Knowledge course(s):
DCUCI Cisco Data Center Unified Computing Implementation
DCUCD Cisco Data Center Unified Computing Design
CIPT1v8.0 Cisco IP Telephony part 1
CIPT2v8.0 Cisco IP Telephony part 2
CVOICEv8.0 Implementing Cisco Unified Communications Voice over IP and QoS
CAPPSv8.0 Integrating Cisco Unified Communications Applications
VMware vSphere: Fast Track [V4.1]
VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage [V4.1]
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About the Author

Jeffrey Hall is an Independent Consultant and Instructor. Jeffrey has more than 15 years of experience designing
and administering Security, Unified Communications, Datacenter, and Virtualization solutions for such organizations as the U.S. Army, SBC, AT&T, and Genesis Networks.
Additionally, Jeffrey holds the following certifications: VCI, VCP, CCSI, CCNP Security, CCNP Voice, Data Center
Support Specialists, CCIP, CCDP, and CCNP and lives in the Memphis, TN area with his wife, two daughters, and
grandson.

Copyright 2011 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved.

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