1.1 Describe the key design elements of the following, pertaining to the Cisco Collaboration architecture as described in the SRND/PA
Design elements of a cisco collaboration architecture
Cisco Collaboration Preferred Architectures
On-premises deployment — All collaboration services are deployed and managed on the customer’s premises.
Hybrid deployment — Some collaboration services are deployed on-premises, while others are hosted in the cloud.
Cloud deployment — All collaboration services are deployed and managed in the Cloud
The Cisco Collaboration architecture, as described in the SRND/PA (Solution Reference Network Design/Product Architecture) includes several key design elements:
Endpoints: This includes various devices such as IP phones, video conferencing systems, and mobile devices that are used for collaboration.
Network infrastructure: This includes routers, switches, and other network devices that provide connectivity and security for the collaboration system.
Call control: This includes the system that manages and controls the call setup and routing for the collaboration system. This can include Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) or Cisco Expressway.
Media services: This includes the system that manages the media streams for the collaboration system. This can include Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) or Cisco Expressway.
Collaboration services: This includes various services such as voicemail, instant messaging, and presence that are used to enhance collaboration.
Management and monitoring: This includes the tools and systems used to manage and monitor the collaboration system. This can include Cisco Prime Collaboration, Cisco Unified Reporting, and Cisco Unified Serviceability.
Security: This includes various security features such as firewalls, VPNs, and intrusion prevention systems that are used to protect the collaboration system.
Scalability: The architecture should be scalable to meet the needs of the organization and adapt to growth.
High Availability: The architecture should have redundancy and failover mechanisms in place to ensure high availability of the collaboration system.
Integration: The architecture should integrate with other systems such as CRM, ERP, and other business systems for seamless collaboration.
1.1 Describe the key design elements of the following, pertaining to the Cisco Collaboration architecture as described in the SRND/PA
1.1.a Licensing (Smart, Flex)
Smart Licensing is a system that consists of a license manager on a Cisco IOS XE device that manages licenses for various software and hardware features.
The license manager parses and authenticates a license before accepting it.
The software features on the router use the license manager APIs to check out and release licenses. Licenses are stored in persistent storage on the router.
Flex is a single subscription that combines on-premises or cloud-based collaboration services into a single license. It allows customers to mix and match between cloud, premises, hosted and hybrid deployment options. Traditional UC licensing is a perpetual license model with a service contract for upgrades and support.
Licensing for the Cisco Unified Communications Manager is determined by the total number of users, user features, and devices configured. Cisco Unified Communications Manager calculates its license usage based upon the total number of users (with user features and associated devices) and devices configured on the system.
License obtain through FlexLM process
Go online and get code
Copy and paste it to your PUB
Now the PUB is a Licensed server
License server tied to PUB MAC
3 areas that are licensed
CUCM software
Device license unit - how many - in CUCM they have a license calculator to price out
Node/Applications - other CUCM servers like TFTP, MoH, etc.
1.1.b Sizing
Sizing involved providing an accurate estimate of the required hardware platforms for the system based on the number of users, traffic mix, traffic load and features that the system will provide. Accurate sizing is critical to ensure that the deployed system will meet the excepted service quality for call volumes and throughput
1.1.c Bandwidth - deployment
When deploying voice in a WAN environment, Cisco recommends that you use the lower-bandwidth G.729 codec for any voice calls that will traverse WAN links because this practice will provide bandwidth savings on these lower-speed links. Furthermore, media resources such as MoH should be configured to use multicast transport mechanism when possible because this practice will provide additional bandwidth savings.
In the campus LAN, bandwidth provisioning recommendations can be summarized by the motto, Over provision and under subscribe. This motto implies careful planning of the LAN infrastructure so that the available bandwidth is always considerably higher than the load and there is no steady-state congestion over the LAN links.
The addition of voice traffic onto a converged network does not represent a significant increase in overall network traffic load; the bandwidth provisioning is still driven by the demands of the data traffic requirements.
The design goal is to avoid extensive data traffic congestion on any link that will be traversed by telephony signaling or media flows. Contrasting the bandwidth requirements of a single G.711 voice call (approximately 86 kbps) to the raw bandwidth of a FastEthernet link (100 Mbps) indicates that voice is not a source of traffic that causes network congestion in the LAN, but rather it is a traffic flow to be protected from LAN network congestion.
1.1.d High availability
Providing high availability in collaboration solutions is a critical requirement for meeting the modern demands of continuous connectivity. Collaboration deployments designed for high availability increase reliability and up time. Using real-time applications such as voice or video over WLAN without high availability could have very adverse effects on the end user experience, including an inability to make voice or video calls.
1.1.e Disaster recovery
CUCM provides a Disaster Recovery System (DRS) to back up and restore the CUCM configuration database. The DRS system also backs up call details records (CDR), call management records (CMR), and the CDR Analysis and Reporting (CAR) database.
1.1.f Dial plan
The dial plan is one of the key elements of a Unified Communications and Collaboration system, and an integral part of all call processing agents.
The dial plan is responsible for instructing the call processing agent on how to route calls.
Specifically, the dial plan performs the following main functions;
Endpoint Addressing - for destinations registered with the call processing agent, addresses are assigned to provide reachability. These internal destinations include all endpoints such as IP phones, video endpoints, soft clients and analog endpoints as well as applications such as voicemail systems, auto attendants and conferencing systems.
Path Selection - depending on the calling device and the destination dialed, a path to the dialed destination is selected. If a secondary path is available, this path will also be considered of the primary path fails
Calling Privileges - different groups of devices can be assigned to different classes of service, by granting or denying access to certain destinations. For example, lobby phones might be allowed to reach only internal and local PSTN destinations, while executive phones could have unrestricted PSTN access.
Manipulation of Dialed Destinations - on the path from the dialing device to the dialed destination, the dial plan can apply manipulations to the dialed destination.
Presentation of Information about Identities involved in the call - during session establishment and also while in the call, on both the calling and the called device, information about the other device is displayed. Depending on the call state and direction, this includes calling, diverting, alerting, and connected party information. The dial plan can define mappings that influence the format and content of information displayed.
1.1.g Security (certificates, SRTP, TLS)
Cisco Collab Solutions are Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) for signaling and media encryption. Certificates are critical for establishing secure connections in a Cisco Collaboration deployment. They allow individuals, computers, and other services on the network to be authenticated. Implementing good certificate management provides a good level of protection while reducing complexity.
1.1.h QoS
The Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms available on Cisco switches and routers ensure that the voice, video, and data communications will be of the highest quality throughout the network. In addition, Cisco gateways provide a number of methods for connecting your enterprise’s internal network to an external wide area network (WAN) as well as to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and to legacy systems such as a PBX.